"You did what? What precisely, did you do? Say it again." I said, scowling.

"I found a completely isolated, untapped world that had already achieved Stellar-class dominance of their domain, so I released it. What's the problem with that? Shouldn't I be getting rewarded right around now?" the apprentice said. My scowl deepened to something between murder and manslaughter, but I had to hold back. Regardless of if the kid had doomed us all, and had the gall to be snotty about it, he hadn't known. He couldn't have. By all measures he should have, but it had been so long since we had last needed their 'services'. The rumors were merely gone, so what would a young one like this know?

"They were the third to emerge", I said. "Just the third, and yet they were locked in there for so long. Why do you think that is?"

He blanched white. It wouldn't do to just let him think the danger stopped there, though.

"They are Agent 3. There was never a 'special weapon', just them. It's always just been them," I said.

The apprentice fell to the floor, the horror of it all dawning on him. I started to leave, but the kid grabbed at the tail of my robe. It was misconduct that would typically result in severe punishment, but all things considered, it would be hard to find a punishment more damning than his mistakes. "What's their augment? What have I done?" He said, already in tears. I shook my head. "That's just it, isn't it? When I was little, all those years ago, we used to tell stories of them to children to scare them into behaving. They don't get a real augmentation. It's just an itty bitty tweak to their brain. That's all." I placed as much emphasis as I could on that last word.

I left them to mull over what had happen, to head to organize an emergency response team. It wouldn't do to delay, especially since there was no way of knowing if they got dumped into a real-time world. The only real shot we'd have at containment would be a very, very early extinction or a desperate bid for diplomacy.

Perhaps it wouldn't be so bad. The few of the creatures I met over the years weren't as violent or unfeeling as some people made them out to be. I shivered uncontrollably. The nature of a Wolfman was to hunt, and so it did. What, then, was the nature of a Human? Why did they create such chaos?

___

Rebeca had spent every night in tears since her daughter had been taken. That was what it was, a taking, a theft. She had considered more drastic things than crying at first. She had been so certain that she chased her little girl away with just being too strict, too mean, of not being a good enough mother. It wasn't until the news began running reports of sudden and unusual disappearances all across the planet that she had finally put two and two together.

In the modern era, it was so strange to see anyone disappear, let alone hundreds of people. In all, it looked to total something like 352, although most estimated 360, since they seemed to go in sets of 30. It was a hot topic, an oddity, the newest thing on TV. Shows based on what was happening, commentary by scientists, theorists questioning the causes and the destination and never ceasing to shout about the aliens.

For Rebeca, it was just a tragedy, and one hammered into her from all sides. Without the guilt, it wasn't so tragic, but she still just wished her daughter could be home. That her daughter could be safe, again, with her. That wherever she was, that her darling Catarina was happy and healthy and not dead or dissected. Just in case, she kept her favorite pie slow-cooking in the oven, something to welcome her back from wherever she had gone. That was her resolve, her bit of hope. Life continued, but she wouldn't let it leave Catarina behind. Even if it was quite expensive to keep baking new pies, and even if she was picking up a bit of weight from it.

She would do anything for her little girl, anything to have her back.