The smells and sounds of terrified displaced humans filled the cafeteria.

Ben wouldn't have believed that a human nose could smell fear before walking into that room, but being in the middle of it, being suffused by it and contributing to it, it rammed home that some ancient metaphors had a basis in reality.

He was getting a crash course in a lot of primeval concepts today.

"Please take a seat. Rest them weary bones," Ron Canada was saying. The Lirral was standing at one end of the cafeteria, which had been made into a temporary alien science lab. The alien's smooth faceplate was no different to the others, but his voice had a non-specific southern accent. "Y'all have had a hell of a day, but heaven's light is shinin' on you now."

The white featureless plates of Ron Canada's armor matched the white featureless equipment positioned around him.

There were two pieces like airport check-in terminals, curved vertical boats of white ceramic, each with a single flat face of glossy black glass. There was a cocktail-bar-like structure curving around in a courgette-bend behind him, and a tall conical structure a little behind that.

The cone, a foot wide at its base, was as tall as the room would allow. It gave off an aura of menace to Ben, like he was looking at a high-voltage switch box.

Around the room, the people from the lobby settled down into cafeteria chairs, all lined up to face the equipment at the front.

A few people instantly pulled out cellphones. Some recording, others taking notes.

When everyone was sitting, Ron Canada moved to a position in front of the curving cocktail-bar object. He raised his too-thin arm, holding his hand in the air. A second later, cones of light appeared, shining out of the black faces of the check-in-terminal devices.

The light was faint as it left the black glass, but where the two cones intersected, they created a realistic three-dimensional shape. A hologram, completely solid.

It was some kind of logo, Ben thought. A symmetrical shape made of overlapping rectangles, with elaborations on the sides. It reminded him of Ron Canada's headpiece.

"Friends, welcome to our stronghold. Y'all are a lucky few. We only have a few dozen of these places set up, and you're one of the first. Work hard, stay orderly, and listen to what you're told, and you'll find peace and reward in heaven's light."

There was a brief burst of muttering among the gathered people. Ben had a few things he'd like to mutter as well, but he didn't have anyone to talk to. On his left, Dawn looked like she was paying attention to the alien, and on his right there was only Monroe.

The projected image changed. Now, instead of the symbol, it showed one of the teardrop aliens. It was the regular type; it had an inverted dark gray teardrop body, with long legs emerging from the lower point.

"This here's an Eater of Order," Ron Canada said. "We call 'em zero points, because that's what they are outside a spacetime. S'only when they get into a universe that they get their dimensionality, you understand."

The hologram changed, giving a view of the monster's internal anatomy. It was mostly hollow, according to the projected image. A gray void that might have been filled with goop, but with a few oval blobs floating around inside. One of the floating organs, a purple-black kidney bean the size of a grapefruit, began to glow.

"Now this little blooblah is its entropic vacuole," Ron Canada said, the faceplate turning to look over the crowd. "That right there is worth one meal credit."

The image changed again, this time the glowing light putting focus on a rod-like organ.

"An' this is its membranal anchor. Now that's worth four meal credits. Are you getting the picture?"

A woman in the audience with a severe bob haircut raised her hand to ask a question, but Ron Canada went on.

"Now this here thing's skin is topologically bound. That means none of the little knives or guns or what-have-you that you have in this realm will do any good."

The bob woman spoke up. "Hey? Yeah, excuse me? Excuse me?"

Ron Canada stopped speaking and turned to face the woman, his blank faceplate giving nothing away. At almost the same moment, the tall cone structure behind the other equipment started emitting a low buzz.

"Now, miss. You are interrupting. It's somewhat rude," Ron Canada said.

Anxiety forced Ben's jaws together, teeth pressing against teeth. Ron Canada seemed friendly, even jovial, but he'd seen that the Lirral could turn to violence on no notice.

"Yeah, sorry," the woman said, not sounding sorry. "Meal credit? Explain. What is that?"

"Of course," Ron Canada said.

The projected image changed again, this time showing three roughly rectangular icons that reminded Ben of tabbed folders. Each was a different color, blue, yellow, and silver, and they each became the obvious focus of the projection as Ron continued speaking.

"Each meal token can be swapped for one square meal. Enough food to keep one of you humans on your feet for a whole day. Eleven of those will swap for one equipment token. Sixteen equipment tokens will get you an appeal token. Now, you can use these tokens to buy things through your Vital Equipment."

Towards the front of the room a man jumped up from his seat. "You're fucking commodifying this? We thought you were here to save us!"

"Now, now, calm yourselves. We're only doin' this to give you your best chance of serving. This is just how it goes. Sit yourselves back down. Go on, now."

The man looked around, maybe looking for support, maybe for anyone else as outraged as he felt, then sank back into his seat.

The image changed again, this time showing one of the giant starfish.

"Now this big fella is a Septilateral. He's interstitial too. He doesn't have any blooblahs, but if you're in a pinch their meat makes decent eatin'."

"But what are they! What are you! What is happening? Where are we?" The voice came from behind Ben. It sounded like an older woman.

Ron Canada paused, its faceplate seeking out the woman in the crowd.

When he spoke next, his voice was lacking its accent. He sounded like any other Lirral.

"The membrane around your universe has been pierced, and your world is herniating into interstitial void," it said, voice blank and atonal.

A hologram appeared with an abstract version of what the alien was saying, the classic sheet-and-ball metaphor for Earth in space.

The animated hologram progressed, and the ball of the Earth kept sinking and sinking until it was only connected by a thin tube of sheet, like a gobstopper stuck in the tip of a condom.

"Your sphere is currently within a small bubble of spacetime, surrounded by the void between realms. That is the source of the creatures you have seen. They are life-forms falling from interstitial space. You have seven days before the bubble detaches and your world joins ours as a permanent denizen of the void."

There was silence as people tried to process that. Many didn't understand, Ben included, except that it was something cataclysmic, that there was no coming back from it.

There was something missing from the picture. Ben didn't want to draw attention to himself, but if nobody else was going to ask, he'd have to.

He raised his hand before speaking, though he didn't think the alien understood the gesture. "Where are all the missing people?"

A few people in the cafeteria looked at him like he was stupid. Clearly they'd all been eaten. But Ben had seen empty cars with locked doors, and school buses emptied with no signs of violence.

"Well, if y'all give me a minute, I'll get to that," Ron Canada said, the Southern persona returning. "Some of them, sadly, they got eaten, but the majority o' them got ejected into the void."

The hologram changed again. This time it showed life-sized representations of people, first one, then another, like it was flicking through a library. Men, women, lots of children.

They were all frozen in standing or sitting positions, suspended in TV-static-gray surroundings, with neutral or absent expressions fixed their faces.

"Don't you worry a jot about them. They aren't sufferin' none. They're just outside o' space and time."

"They're just floating out there in space?" the woman behind Ben said. "We've got to get them back!"

"And you can do just that, with an appeal token," Ron Canada said. "Now, they won't always be there by the time you try and get them. There are some hungry things out there in the interstice. Heaven's light does not shine upon them."

Ben looked at the steadily ticking screen of frozen humans.

Was Ben's dad out there somewhere, floating in a timeless void? It might be better than him being on Earth right now, whether he'd survived the onslaught of monsters or not.

He wanted to ask, but suddenly everyone else was having the same idea, shouting questions over each other, all of which Ron Canada was ignoring.

One man in the front row stood up and started yelling at Ron Canada from close up. The cone at the front of the room buzzed, and the man vanished.

One moment he was waving his hands in Ron Canada's face, then there was an ultra-fast stripe of color flying upwards, then he was gone, like he'd been whipped away by a superluminal bungee cord.

The crowd stopped shouting instantly.

"Please, calm down, calm down," Ron Canada was saying.

There was a moment where the energy in the crowd could have turned to panic, or something more ugly. The others teetered on the edge of that decision, but eventually came down on the side of silence. Those who'd risen sat back down, this time on the edge of their seats.

"That was what we call an ejection," the Lirral said. "Just a little something we use to enforce order. Heaven is orderliness."

Some of the people in the crowd were wearing expressions of horror. Ben had already seen the Lirral do worse, but he still seethed.

All of that power, the ability to remove people from the world at will, and they'd still made the choice to burn a guy to death, for something that wasn't his fault, and that Ben was sure hadn't even been affecting him.

Someone in the crowd said something angry.

Ben was distracted by movement at his chest.

His first thought was that Dawn was trying to get his attention, but when he looked down, she was nowhere near.

Instead, his shirt was bunching up, as if a finger and thumb were pinching it from behind. It was the spot right over his alien growth.

He pulled at the cloth, freeing it from the bunching, and realized the thing had grabbed a bit of the fabric in its mouth.

He looked up, trying to ignore it and trying not to draw attention to himself. He hadn't seen how the complainer from a second ago had been resolved, but Ron Canada was talking again.

"Them devices you got at the bridge will let you get on to the (Apogee Distributary*. It works by touch, and its ordered by category."

The alien thing on Ben's chest started tugging the fabric again. There was a crunching, tearing sound, and Ben realized with shock the thing had bitten a chunk out of his shirt.

Looking down, he could see the hole, the line of an alien mouth hiding behind it. As he watched, a tendril emerged and started pulling the fabric around, trying to reposition the hole.

He slapped a hand over his chest.

The movement caught Dawn's attention, who shot him a glance. Her expression held concern, but not for him. The whole situation was obviously getting to her.

"Now, none of y'all have a penny to your names, so we've given you three Meal tokens each, and one basic Equipment token. Heaven is benevolence."

Tendrils pressed against Ben's palm. Tiny pressures, like questing Q-tips. A low hissing came from behind his hand.

He had to get out of here. But could he just leave? Would that get him ejected?

Around the room, the tablet things the alien at the bridge had been handing out lit up. Light shone from Ben's pocket as well, and when people around him started pulling theirs out he used his free hand to mirror them.

"To use the Distributary, just draw the symbol of heaven," Ron Canada said. The projected image at the front reacted, showing a white circle.

Not wanting to look out of place, Ben balanced the tablet on his lap traced a circle on the screen.

Tendrils were still trying to push his hand away from his chest. One tried to worm its way between his fingers, and he was forced to shift to keep it contained.

On his lap, the tablet reacted to the gesture, showing a similar screen to the one before.

Order

Restraint

Survival

Nuance

Availability:

1 Equipment Token (Basic)

3 Meal Token

"I'll leave the rest to you, humble survivors. Don't forget to order your meal package, an' stay around for more notices. With our protection and provision, you will learn to survive us well."

One person immediately stood and went to the exit. Ben was only the second person on his feet, grabbing his backpack from under the chair and heading after them.

Dawn looked on with confusion, before slowly rising. Ben was out of the room before she could say anything to him.

He made for the bathroom.

The thing on his chest — the Lirral had called it a Worm of Disorder — had progressed to biting, testing his hand with a pair of sharp teeth, though not breaking skin.

He slipped the tablet into his pocket as he made it into the bathroom. It was empty, sinks and mirrors standing against one wall, urinals and a couple of cubicles on the other.

He dashed for a cubicle.

Finally he removed his hand. An alien eye peered out at him through the hole in his shirt.

"You little shit," he swore at it. "You're going to get me killed."

Movement somewhere below the eye. A low hissing sound.

Ben leaned down and unzipped his bag, pulling out the duck tape.

The toilet roll holder had a quarter roll left, which Ben unspooled and left stacked on top of the unit. He tore the empty cardboard tube into a rectangle, then reached under his shirt to ducktape it over his chest, completely covering the alien growth.

There was hissing as he taped the corners to his chest, but the thing didn't try to chew through it. Maybe it wanted to, but there wasn't enough flexibility in the cardboard for it to get a mouthful.

He used another strip of tape to close the hole in his shirt, sticking it on the inside.

When he was done, it didn't look great, but it didn't look suspicious. Just a crappy patch job of a torn shirt. It was definitely better than having a forbidden alien eye peering out of there. He zipped up his bag and headed out.

When he got back to the lobby, Monroe was waving a purple-bladed sword around like it was a toy light saber. Dawn was giving Monroe the stink-eye, and Hayden was heading for the exit.

Ben took up step beside her, not wanting to get any closer to the tooth-gritting buy-in to the Lirral system that was going on back in the lobby.

They made it to the door, and nobody stopped them on the way out.