The lobby of the visitor center was busy. The ticket desk had been taken over by a frazzled-looking middle aged man with a pink bald head, round glasses, and a tidy white shirt, who was taking the details of newcomers down in handwritten notes on white printer paper.

He reminded Ben of a colleague at Leith, a guy who'd been a perfect corporate drone in the office, but smoked pot on every cigarette break.

"Where are you in from?" the man asked, barely looking up at Ben as they filed in through the door.

"Carver Memorial Road, east Port Cardigan," Ben said.

"All of you?"

"We're from the same office," Dawn said, stepping up beside Ben.

The clerk delved into a pile of papers and brought out a Maine road atlas, which he pushed across the desk with a pencil.

"Trace the route you took to get here."

Ben took the map and drew in their route to the highway then out to Bowen's Bridge. Hayden interrupted a couple of times to correct his memory, and Ben pushed the map back across the desk.

The clerk glanced at it, before taking a photo with his phone and removing the pencil lines with a pink lump of a putty eraser.

"Run into any trouble on this route?" he asked.

This wasn't just keeping records for records' sake, Ben realized. It was an information gathering operation. They were trying to map out the dangers in the city.

"We saw a lot of those black spider things, and starfish on pretty much every major road in the city," Ben said.

"Our friends from above call the spiders Eaters of Order, and the starfish Septilaterals," the clerk said. He made some notes on his phone, and then also on a sheet of paper.

"There was a demon zombie," Monroe called, calling from behind Ben.

The clerk blinked and looked up.

"We picked up a survivor," Ben elaborated. "She went crazy halfway up the highway. Didn't die from gunshots, didn't seem human."

"That's a new one to me," the clerk said, writing. "Maybe our friends will include that in the briefing."

"What do you know about them?" Ben asked, leaning over the desk. "The aliens at the bridge. The Lirral."

The clerk looked up from his papers at one of the white-armored aliens, which was standing guard at the side of the room. There were enough people and background chatter in the foyer that their voices wouldn't carry.

"They say they're in charge, and they seem to be right," the clerk said, turning his attention back to his notes. "I'd take them over any of the monsters running around out there, if that's the choice we're facing."

He drew a line under the notes on the sheet and raised his voice when he next spoke. "There's a briefing in about half an hour in the restaurant. Supposedly they're going to let us know what is going on."

"Thanks," Ben said. "One more thing. Do you have any doctors here? Nurses? Maybe a vet?"

The clerk looked Ben up and down then pointed to a wide corridor on his left. "We have an infirmary set up in the Revolutionary War exhibit."

Ben and Dawn thanked the man and moved a little way off to talk. They settled in a loose semi-circle against the wall, and Ben turned to talk to the group.

"I'm going to head to the infirmary," he said.

Ben was a little worried about fending off questions about how he was hurt from the others, but it turned out none of them picked up on what he said.

He thought Monroe would be tagging along to get the cut on his chest looked at, and had been preparing excuses to keep him away while he had his guest examined, but he must have been happy with the job Hayden had done.

Dawn was the only one who took note. She gave him a pensive look. Of all of them, she was the only one who could guess why he was going.

Dawn looked at Monroe then back at Ben. "I think we'll stick together," she said.

"Okay, see you soon," Ben said.

Dawn patted his arm, only once glancing at his chest. Ben turned to go.

~

The infirmary was set up in one of the museum's main halls. Ben walked through the doors to find the tables cleared of exhibits

Paper-mache battlefields crowded the corners of the room, leaning against walls and disassembled into pieces. Row upon row of tiny revolutionary soldiers lined the picture rail around the room, posed so that their guns pointed inwards.

Several of the tables had been converted into beds with curtains and cushions, but they were all currently empty. There was a small queue of people waiting to be seen. None of them seemed in a particularly bad way.

A frazzled-looking pair of women of different ages stood by one table that was loaded by first-aid supplies. As Ben arrived, one of them called the next person forward, and the pregnant woman at the front of a short queue moved up to speak with them quietly.

Several of the Lirral guards stood around the perimeter of the room, they were all holding large pieces of gleaming equipment, and they weren't offering medical attention.

As he watched one of the medics examine the pregnant woman with a stethoscope, Ben felt a weird flash of normality. Waiting at doctor's offices, waiting in a queue.

Apart from the aliens, even the surroundings were weirdly normal. The drab 70's decor of the museum had somehow become weirdness antimatter, annihilating the abnormality of the rest of the day.

It left him feeling energized, like he'd woken from a nightmare, and all that was left was to let the sweat dry and drag himself to the kitchen for a coffee.

The medics finished with the woman and she moved away, walking past Ben on her way out of the room. The next man in line moved forward and pulled up his pants leg.

Ben had half a second to spot a way-too-familiar tumorous bulge in the guy's calf, complete with mouth and eye, before the Lirral guards went off.

Two of them stepped forward, raised their weapons, and fired.

Twin cones of shimmering rainbow light shone on the man. His skin blackened, his face going crispy as burnt bacon. Fingers, hands, and forearms turned to ash.

He didn't start screaming until a second in, and it only lasted for a second after that. The agonized noise of a human dying came and passed like a siren speeding by on a road outside an apartment window.

The man's body crumpled, decaying into fragments, about as recognizable as a scarecrow on a bonfire.

In the last moments before he became an unrecognizable pile of cinders, a pair of pink tendrils lashed out of the collapsing form, whipping across the Lirral. They left faint scratches on the white armor, but did no real damage.

The whole thing only took a handful of seconds, and then the man was just dust, on the ground and in the air.

Screams. Enough human terror to burst eardrums. Everyone in the queue was running. One of the medics was reeling, the other was just staring at the ash-white pile, something vital now missing from their eyes.

"You- You-" Ben couldn't get the words out.

After Eve, after the teardrops, after Mr. Cunningham, he didn't have a normal horror response. He just had anger. Fury. These were more monsters, just that they could talk.

"You killed that man!" he managed to say.

One of the Lirral twisted its body to face him. It raised a hand, palm out. "Do not be afraid. That human was infected by a dangerous parasite, a Worm of Disorder. We destroyed it for the safety of all the beings here. Heavens light has scoured it clean."

"No. You murdered him." Ben was having trouble breathing, and he could feel spittle on his chin. Maybe he wasn't as immured to the horror of it as he thought. "He was alive! He was fine! He came here for help."

The Lirral shook its head mechanically. "The moment the parasite forms, the host is completely under its control. That being was no longer human. It was a danger to every human here."

"But, he came here for help," Ben repeated. "He just walked right up. He showed you."

The brief hope and energy Ben had felt was gone, replaced by exhaustion. A sudden burst of itching at his chest reminded him why he'd come here. He stepped backwards.

"Do not be deceived by their appearance. Once a worm of disorder has embedded itself, the host's original mind is gone. That human was already dead. He was beyond heaven's help."

Ben took another step back, still heaving breaths. He had to get out of there before they started looking too closely at him. Did they have sensors? Could they pick up his infection?

"You're all crazy. You're as bad as the monsters out there," he said as he backed away further. He made it to the entrance and turned away, pushing through the double doors on his way out.

He scratched at his chest furiously as he power-walked down the corridor. The lump on his chest squished and moved under his hand.

No. What the fuck.

He wasn't under the control of some alien parasite. He was the same person he'd always been.

He wouldn't even have known the thing was there if he hadn't looked.

How could he be sure he was himself? What were the tests? He didn't want to hurt anyone. No humans anyway. He didn't want to sabotage the shelter. He didn't have any alien, tumory, tentacley thoughts.

No.

They'd got it wrong. Or humans were different. Or they'd lied.

Dawn, Hayden, and Monroe were grouped together on a couch pushed against one wall. The lobby had a vending machine that was already half empty and the three of them had taken advantage of it. As he arrived, Monroe tossed a bag of chips at him that slapped Ben in the face.

He let the chips fall. He crouched down in front of the couch in front of Dawn and spoke in a low voice.

"We need to leave," he said.

He glanced at the others one by one. Monroe wasn't listening, Hayden seemed curious, and Dawn was looking at him with alarm.

"You want to go back... out there?" she asked.

"These aliens aren't what we think. I just watched them burn a guy to death. To death! They incinerated him alive."

"What? Where?" Dawn asked.

"In the infirmary. They said..." Ben trailed off. Hayden was still listening and he wasn't feeling sharp enough to navigate the informational waters of who knew what. "They gave a reason, but I'm one-hundred percent certain it was bullshit. They're not our friends. They're killers."

Dawn looked uncertain. Not because she didn't believe him, but maybe because she hadn't seen what he had seen. She was comparing the story he was telling in abstract to the concrete horrors she'd seen for herself outside.

"Maybe..." Dawn started, talking out a thought she wasn't sure of. "As long as we don't think they're going to kill us, maybe we stay here for a little longer. Long enough to get on our feet."

Ben was shaking his head. He didn't immediately contradict her. He was trying to think of an argument. He didn't want to go back out there into the world alone.

Monroe leaned down and picked up the dropped bag of chips, waving it in Ben's face.

Ben stared at him. He didn't want to leave without Dawn and Hayden, but maybe Monroe could stay here.

"Howdy, human survivors. Point them peepers over here for just a sec."

Everyone in the lobby turned to face the alien, including the balding desk attendant.

It was standing at the far end of the lobby, just in front of the doors to the cafeteria, its hands outstretched in welcome.

Ben thought he was getting an eye for the Lirral armors, and this one was a little different from the rest.

All of the alien suits had flat rectangular plates jutting out from the sides of their helmets, but this one had more elaborate panels — a pair of symmetrical shapes that seemed more like a headdress than anything that he thought was likely to be functional.

"Mighty obliged to you. The name's Ron Canada. I'm the liaison for this stronghold. If y'all would like to follow me here into this room, I can give you all the rundown."

Dawn turned and made eye contact with Ben, her eyebrows raised, head tilted, her expression saying are we going in there?.

Ben replied with a flat I don't want to stare, but he dragged himself to his feet anyway.

He glanced aat the other two. Monroe met his look with a smile that said Finally, something's going right.

Ben grabbed the camping backpack he'd looted from Target and carried it by the top loop. He didn't want to leave it alone, when he didn't even necessarily trust the other humans here not to take it.

Together the rest of them stood and joined the crowd filing into the cafeteria. At the very least, this should get them some answers, and the Lirral clearly weren't about to start killing people during a crowded presentation.