They'd hung in the air above every major city and population centre for a day, unmoving, unresponsive and inert, ignoring every attempt at communication made by the increasingly frantic nations of the world. It was bad enough that all flight paths were closed, clamping humanity to the ground in a way that was thought banished by modernity, but many said the not knowing - not knowing what the monolithic alien ships would do and not knowing when they would do it - was the worst. They were wrong.

It was over in a matter of hours. The entire governing apparatus of every nation was removed swiftly, coldly, and resistance met with deadly force. Any who tried to ignore or fight the cold, gunmetal-grey spheres that came down giving warnings to depart the buildings they occupied were gunned down from small apertures that opened on the smooth surface of the alien devices, flechettes piercing several major organs, always including the heart and brain, in milliseconds.

The spheres broadcast their messages in multiple languages, and those who did as they were told suffered no attentions from them, and were simply left to head out and head home. It was, many said in tones of awe, the quietest, most efficient change-over of power ever seen. For weeks, nothing changed. Daily life continued as ever, and those who worked in the lower rungs of the civil service noticed little change in their duties, save that responses and decisions seemed to come back faster and more efficiently than before. It took little more than 3 months for the world to, for the first time, be completely at peace. Resources, food, production, all increased across the world, and while the richest saw their wealth wiped out, in real terms the standard of living for all rose.

In those months, the invaders were seen by many as benevolent gods, bringing peace to an unruly humanity that could not be trusted with its own future. The origin of the mysterious ships, ships that disappeared immediately after releasing the spheres, was much debated, but few continued to resist either physically or within their hearts. It was only after the third month, when the spheres began "the Taking," as it soon became known, that fear and hatred began to grow.

"They took another 42 just last night," Lou slammed his fists on the table as he spoke, face red and eyes ablaze. "Strolled right up to people's doors and took them. No-one even tried to resist."

"We've seen what happens when they try," said Smoke, sitting opposite.

The room they sat in was a basement in a nondescript house on a nondescript street. Its owners, a young working couple who had barely moved in, were among the first of those taken, whisked away to what was by now a giant walled structure towering over the city.

"We're the only ones that can try anything like that," said a tall, braided woman with her feet up on the table around which the group sat, seemingly relaxed but with a wary air and eyes that swept the room from door to table and back.

"They shoot first, ask questions never."

As she spoke, her chest and forehead rippled and morphed, turning to a shimmering liquid, like water with millions of silver flakes suspended in it, remembering the flying flechettes passing through her during her first encounter with the spheres.

"Not too different from the good old days."

As a black woman growing up in the downtown of a major US city, she sometimes had difficulty differentiating the floating grey spheres from the old police force. Triss Morgan had had only a short time to enjoy fame as Lunar, the "living silver," before the world had changed.

"Yeah, well, we've hardly been fighting back. We run every time they notice us," said Smoke, disgust at himself clear in his tone.

"I-It's weird. We can go out, walk right past m-m-most of the time, no p-problem. Then suddenly they're diving straight at you, spitting m-metal and trying to grind you into mincemeat. They must know by now they can't, r-right?"

Ollie, his nervous stammer strong today, was only in his mid-20s but his unkempt stubble and the lines around his eyes made him look at least a decade older. Ollie had been running all his life, and no-one knew where he was really from. He was very good at running, however.

"Who knows what the hell those things are thinking. May as well try to give motivations to the weather. We can't scratch them, can't communicate with them, can't do anything! I tell ya, if something doesn't change soon I'm gonna lose it."

Lou again, punching the table once more, but this time having to force the passion, tiredness creeping in around his eyes and into his voice. Smoke looked at him in concern - Lou hadn't been back to his room for days, instead constantly searching around the structure growing above the city for any sign of its purpose. Fortunately, his investigations of the mass of spires projecting from the ground were completely ignored by the spheres that whirred around the area. Smoke didn't know what would happen to Lou if they suddenly attacked him as they did the Advanced.

Actually, he did. Lou would be dead, and there was nothing he could do about it. His fists clenched in frustration, and he reached for a cigarette[1].

"Well, someone has to fight back. They killed thousands of us. They have to pay for that, and if someone doesn't make a move soon I'm not sure we won't all just forget, letting them control us like good little sheep."

Lunar took her feet off the table as she spoke, leaning forward, eyes growing intense as she looked at each person in turn. Finally, she turned to her left, where the final member of the group sat, chair slightly back and away from the table and group, shadowed in a way that hid his face and any way of seeing his expression.

"You're the one who found us all, you know. You told us you had a plan. At the very least, an idea."

"And I do," said the shadowed figure.

It was always odd at first, looking at him. The room was well-lit, and there was no way shadows could be falling across the figure in such a way, yet nevertheless they were, shrouding him as if he stood in a dark, rain-swept alley. Each member of the group had to admit, at least in the privacy of their own thoughts, that he looked pretty damn cool.

"But as I have explained, we need time. And more than time, we need him."

"Look, we've been searching for him, but I don't get it. He was chased out of town, could be anywhere, and if we even manage to find him I'm not exactly sure he's going to be up for returning. He'll hardly feel like he owes people anything," said Smoke, more for his own benefit than for the shadowed man's.

"If it's destruction we need, there's f-f-far m-more destructive Altereds out there; I'm sure we can find one of them if we l-l-look," added Ollie.

"And we can get in anywhere he can, and many places he can't," Lunar continued.

The shadowed man looked up, the darkness piling slowly around him, pooling under his seat, pulling the group into the darkness of a moonless night, gathering everywhere except across his eyes, which shone bright green in contrast.

"We do not need others. We need him..."

There was a tense silence.

"Alright, alright, we'll keep looking," Triss shook her head. "Jesus, you are so dramatic, you know? We'll find this goddam FX guy, ok? Now, bring the lights back please, Shade, I can't see anything in this."

Half a world away a drunken, bedraggled figure staggered out of a small speakeasy into the Tokyo rain, singing to himself as he dragged his feet down the small alleyway, both sides of which featured the small, two-storey snack bars that made up this area of Shinjuku. The light of the neon signs just about illuminated his face as he looked up, mumbling the words to some half-forgotten song.

He sang his way down the narrow alley and turned onto a wider pedestrian boulevard, half a bottle of whiskey hanging from his hand, partially covered by the sleeve of his jacket. The fact it was mid-week, and the rain, meant that the area was quiet, only the occasional salaryman stumbling past on his way to find a taxi home breaking the peacefulness, or young couples out slightly later and slightly further than they may have planned earlier in the evening. Rounding a corner the drunken man leaned with one hand against the wall, looking up and around as he tried to get his bearings in this maze of alleys. As he did so a grey-haired Japanese man in a dishevelled suit looked up from across the way, where he was sitting on a small wall, equally drunk.

"You from?" slurred the man in broken English, smiling and pleased to see a fellow drunkard, "Where from?" he asked.

"Where'm I from? Ha, good question!"

He just about got the words out, but doing so sent the world spinning so he staggered over to the man and sat on the wall next to him.

"I'm from many places, my friend, many places."

The elder man seemed to find this hilarious, his head tossing back in laughter.

"Many places - yes, me too, me too!"

Sharing the whiskey they sat there for a time, speaking the inane conversation of the terminally drunk, not understanding each other and barely understanding themselves.

It was after a few minutes of this[2] that the grey sphere came hovering down the alley. Both men watched it float past, seemingly sobering up at least somewhat, eyes narrowing as it came within a few feet of them, not slowing or acknowledging their presence in any way.

"Where from?" said the Japanese man, voice much more sombre and serious than before.

"Where from indeed, my friend, where from indeed."

As he went to take the whiskey bottle from his new friend he caught the movement from the corner of his eye. A flash and a small whizzing sound were all the warnings he got, as he dived and rolled out the way, hands extending towards the source. A huge pulse of sound shook the area, signs falling and windows breaking, as the sphere was smashed back against the wall, shaking and fizzing as the vibrations wrecked whatever was inside, until, cracked and smoking, it fell to the ground, inert.

It was over in a few seconds, so it was only after taking a deep breath and collecting himself that Eric G M Matthews, otherwise known as FX, turned around, to see the man he had just been sharing a drink with lying dead on the ground, his neck torn open by the flechette meant for his own heart. Sighing, he picked up the whiskey bottle lying somehow unbroken on the floor, rearranged the body slightly, covering it with his jacket, and walked, a little unsteadily, into the rain.

It was more than three weeks later that Smoke found him, following a line of subtle clues and hints, like the entire districts of broken glass and groups of people suffering hearing trouble. It was a small town in Shizuoka and he was sitting on the beach, watching the surf pound the shore from a rock, his perch slick in the light autumn rain. Unshaven and unkempt, he didn't acknowledge it when Smoke walked up to stand beside the rock, wind whipping at his hair and face despite the upturned collar of his jacket.

"So this is where you got to," said Smoke, offering a cigarette to FX and, when he turned it down, lighting it for himself. Looking out across the bay, the lights of the Yokohama tower were visible even here, piling high into the sky as if they meant to go on forever. Perhaps they did.

"I like this country," said FX above the wind. "You can be whoever you want out here. It's ironic - we say they're insular, stratified, rigid, but I've not encountered a single person who was anything but friendly to me, no matter where or what I'm doing. Didn't get that back home. People were always looking for a way to judge you there."

"I know what you mean," said Smoke, taking another drag.

"I was helping, you know. Really helping. Sure, it was fun, too, but we were making a difference."

"We were. You were."

"And then they decide to chase me out, like Frankenstein's fuckin' monster or something."

"Well, you did destroy a local government building, and put a bunch of kids in hospital," replied Smoke, knowing this would most likely just irritate FX but saying it anyway.

"Yeah, well, it was a lot better than what the guys holding them would've done, I tell you."

"I know, I know, and the tinnitus isn't permanent anyway. They'd have let you off the hook eventually."

"Off the hook? Off the hook? I saved a dozen kids' lives! Saved them! And just when I think I'm going to be treated as the homecoming hero, they slap me with a summons and try to lock me up until trial! I mean, not even a thank you! Screw them." He spat into the wind[3].

"Yeah, well, I think everyone's got all the punishment they're ever going to deserve, now. The bureaucrats who put the call in are probably 6 feet under by now, or toiling on those goddam pillars."

"Well, I hope they rot there."

"You can say that? You can say that, with what's at the base of those towers?"

The vehemence in Smoke's voice came through, and FX looked confused.

"What are you talking about? What's at the base?"

Smoke flicked his cigarette butt away, looking at FX with a serious expression.

"You haven't seen it yet?"

"I don't know what the hell you're talking about, so... no."

"Are you willing to go to the tower now? It could be dangerous. Those spheres get antsy about people like us getting near."

Instead of replying, FX stood on the rock, hands down, a thin whine building as he rose to float several feet above the ground.

"I see you've got better at focusing your powers. Could be useful," said Smoke, as he began to dissipate, flowing into the air next to his companion, both setting out higher and gathering speed.

Eric had heard the term "charnel house" before, but never seen such a thing in reality. Now, as he stood above the pile of bodies, he understood the term.

"What the hell is this?" he said, voice turning to a whisper in the presence of so much death.

The pile of bodies was stacked 4 or 5 in places, and covered a space like that of a football field. Thin streams of dark liquid ran in rivulets between the corpses, pooling in places. Cold, dead eyes and taut faces stared blindly in all directions, but it was the smell that struck him the hardest. It smelled rotten in a way he had never smelt before, cloying and thick, making it difficult for him to open his eyes, let alone breathe.

"This," said Smoke sombrely, "is what happens when you are too exhausted to work for these bastards. They toss you out into the gutter to rot. Wherever there is a tower, there is a collection like this. Usually more than one. How did you not know this?"

"I haven't exactly been hanging around these things, you know. Every time I tried, I got buzzed and shot at until I left. Got in a few good hits before running, though." His voice carried a pride that Smoke must have picked up on.

"Good hits? What does that even mean? These grey nut-sacks are everywhere. Knocking a few out won't change anything."

"Oh yeah?" said FX, challenge rising in his voice. "And how many of those things have you knocked out of the sky?"

"Look, we have a plan. We going to try to stop this," said Smoke, looking away. "But we need your help. Will you hear us out?"

"Fine, I'll listen. Where are the rest of this 'we,' anyway?"

"In New City. Not all Advanced can fly, you know."

"Ah hell, you've got to be kidding. I knew I was going to regret this."

"But you'll come?"

"I'll come."

They took off into the night, starting the long journey home.

It was almost a week later that they landed in the front garden of the house in New City. It was possible for them to fly faster, faster even than one of the now-obsolete passenger jets littering the abandoned airports, but doing so was cold, uncomfortable, and tough. As they touched down, FX spoke up.

"When did you learn to do that clothing trick, anyway? You were always turning up butt-naked back when I was here."

Smoke reformed in a sports shirt and running shorts, the light material inadequate for the chill evening air, sending a shiver down his spine.

"It's a trick I picked up. I can't break down anything other than myself, but I figured out a way to keep enough of myself dense enough to carry light materials within my cloud. If it comes to a fight, though, they drop out quickly - I can't keep the balance right unless I'm really focused."

"Huh, well, I guess it's an improvement, anyway."

FX stood aside as Smoke walked up to the door and opened it, leading him in and grabbing a jacket left hanging in the entrance hall. Heading downstairs into the basement they heard the muffled sounds of conversation. They descended, to see Triss pacing the small room, clearly irritated by something.

"I'm telling you, if we just keep hanging around here all the time, I'm out. I've got plans of my own, you know. Better than staying around here, at any rate," she spat.

"Triss, I know, alright. But we can't make a move blindly, we need to be patient." This was Shade, shadowed only by natural light and studying photos of the area surrounding the tower.

"Well I guess the wait is over," said Smoke, as he walked into the room, FX walking in after him and looking from person to person. "I found this guy wasting time at the beach."

Smoke's grin was met by glares. Things had obviously not been going well in his absence.

"Hey, where's Ollie? He's usually here at this time of night," he asked, looking around.

Shade looked up from the pictures, taking in the presence of Eric but not reacting.

"He's doing a little errand for me. To be honest, I was beginning to despair of you ever finding this guy, so we started working on a back-up plan. It's not very good, and I'm relieved that it seems we're not going to need it."

Standing, Shade walked towards FX and offered his hand.

"Hi, the name's Stan, but everyone calls me Shade."

"Nice to meet you, Stannie-boy. So, Smoke tells me you have something in mind and it sounds like I have a starring role. I want to be clear I've only come to hear you out; I make no guarantees. You got that?" FX shook Shade's hand, and fell backwards into a chair, looking around the room. "Interesting place. You guys just hang out here all day, or what?"

Triss snorted and said "No no, sometimes we go out and take photos. A great little team we are, really sticking it to those UFOs. They must be quaking in their space boots, or whatever it is they wear."

FX looked up, eyes widening then narrowing as he took in Triss, and standing up he held out his hand. "And who might you be? If Smoke had told me about you, I might have come here a bit faster."

"Don't flatter yourself. You're here to help us, so we're gonna work together, but don't get any ideas."

As she finished her sentence, the air filled with violins, an orchestral crescendo that reverberated around them. With a glare from her, the music cut off abruptly.

"Damn, that usually works on the ladies," said FX, winking at Triss and going back to his seat. "So, you going to fill me in on why I'm so important, or what?"

Shade ran his gaze around the group, then looked FX in the eye. "Well, it's like this. I'm sure we all remember watching you on the news a year or so ago, don't we?" Smoke and Lou nodded, while Triss piped in;

"Sorry, I wasn't into the gossip columns. I heard something about this clown, but not much."

"Well, it's not about the court case, anyway," said Shade, looking at Eric's expression of annoyance and holding out his hands in a calming gesture. "It's about what happened in that courtroom. You were in the dock, cameras all around you, when..."

"...when those fucking spheres came pouring in everywhere and started herding people up. Of course I remember, they blew the goddamned judge's head off when he refused to step down from the podium. He was a bastard, but he didn't deserve that. So what?"

"So, it was on the news that day, mixed in amongst the footage of the spheres elsewhere, and I distinctly remember you sending three of those spheres smashing into the wall. They certainly didn't seem to move after that, is that correct?"

"Yeah, and what's your point?" sneered FX.

"How many spheres did you take out in that courtroom, would you say?"

"Jeez, I don't know. 3 or 4, and a few more on the way out. I still don't see what your point is. I've smashed a lot more than that in the time since."

"That is my point," said Shade, looking around at the others. "Triss, Smoke, in the time since the spheres appeared, how many times have they attacked you?"

"God knows," replied Triss, "more times than I want to remember, anyway."

"And how many of those times," continued Shade, "have you destroyed even one?"

"None," said Smoke, "I turn into vapour, Triss turns into liquid. That's hardly an offensive tool."

"And my bullets don't touch 'em," added Lou, until now watching quietly from the other end of the table. "Bounce right off, they don't even react."

"That's interesting information," said Shade, surprise registering in his voice, "but I was unaware you have been taking pot-shots at those things. Stop it, Lou. No," he added, stronger, as Lou moved to interject, "you are recklessly endangering yourself for no reason. Don't let the frustration get to you."

The shadows curled in around Lou and Shade, his eyes growing more intense in contrast, and Lou sat back.

"Cool trick," said FX, looking at the shadows with interest. "So what you're saying is, none of you have wrecked even one of those things?"

Triss looked annoyed, and ashamed. "No, like Smoke said, we are hardly offensive types."

Shade broke in, "And it wouldn't matter if they were. You knew Jennie Elsewait?"

"Exploding Elsa? Ha, yeah, I know her. She's totally nuts," smiled FX. Then his expression changed. "Wait, what do you mean, 'knew?'"

"Jennie Elsewait could cause explosions more powerful than nitro-glycerine using only the moisture in the air. She was listed as a national security hazard by the North American Federation government, and had been used by mining corporations to break open mountains." Shade paused, ensuring they took in what he was saying. "Jennie was last seen in New Quebec, killed by just two of those spheres you seem to have no problem destroying."

"So what, they took her by surprise?"

"No. In fact, she ambushed them. The spheres were untouched by a sustained attack that destroyed the surrounding area, levelling a hill and wiping out buildings more than two blocks out. She had chosen an abandoned area, evidently wishing to test her powers. When the smoke cleared, the spheres were exactly as they had been, and one unhurriedly floated over to her and shot her dead. All this was recorded by the other sphere, and the footage released as a warning against resistance."

"Shit, that's terrible. I had no idea." He paused. "Wait, so what, you're planning on using me as a weapon? That's your grand plan?"

"No, there's more to it than that, but you are, as far as I can discover, the only person to ever knock one of those out of the air, and that's a valuable ability."

"Yeah, well, I can't say I'm sold, but..."

"Quiet!" hissed Triss. "You hear that?"

"What?" asked FX, looking around. The others froze.

"Nah, it's nothing," said Lou, breaking the silence, and as he finished his sentence the world fell in.

[1] Smoke hadn't even liked smoking when his powers first manifested, but his agent in the early days had loved the image of a 'smoker who smoked', and pushed him into it. Still, no Advanced had yet been known to be susceptible to standard human illnesses, so Smoke had few worries about the effects

[2] Or a few hours, who knew? They were wasted.

[3] He could have regretted that, but got lucky.