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It’s alien.

He’s one of them.

A Ferox.

A shape shifter.

And he’s not just hiding in plain sight, he’s covertly directing the actions of nations.

“If you think complimenting my instincts is going to lead to a My Little Pony Brony hug fest, you’re mistaken.” I step closer, ready to knock his alien teeth out. “I’m going to—”

“Let me go,” he says.

“I was going to say something about your ass and a unicorn horn, but—”

“It wasn’t a suggestion,” he says, lifting up his handcuffed hands. He slowly spreads his arms apart, and it’s like the cuffs aren’t even there. The metal stretches and pops apart without a hint of resistance from the links or any struggle from Cole. Hands free, he takes hold of Hawkins’s python-like arm and calmly pries it away with the same effortless exertion. Hawkins shakes as he resists, his face turning red, but there’s no stopping Cole.

With his neck free, Cole leans forward and whips Hawkins across the room. Lilly dives in front of her father, catching him and easing him to the ground.

I’m about to suggest a calm resolution, as I’m not sure this is a fight we can win, but hotter heads react faster than I can talk.

Joliet dives forward with surprising speed, landing three punches before Cole calmly swats her aside while staring at me as if to say, ‘Really?
Really?
This is the best you can do?’

Collins is next, drawing her revolver with typical lightning speed, but in that fraction of a second it takes her to lift the weapon and slide her finger around the trigger, Cole closes the distance and slips his meaty digit behind the hammer. With a twist of his hand, Cole elicits a shout of pain from my wife and frees the weapon from her grasp. The revolver hits the floor around the same time I think,
Screw it,
to the idea of a peaceful solution. I drive my fist into the side of Cole’s head.

It’s a solid punch to the temple. The kind that crumples a man’s legs under him. But Cole barely flinches. Hawkins mentioned that he’d knocked Cole unconscious before their trip back, but it now seems likely that the big man-alien was faking it.

“This is not helping solve your problems,” he tells me.

I swing again, but he leans back and avoids the blow. Does that mean he’s toying with me, or did the first punch hurt him?

“We are on the same side of this war,” he says.

Another swing and a miss. “This is your war. You brought it here.”

“We brought your simple people out of the caves. We strengthened you with Atlantide blood. We gave you technology. Taught you how to defend yourselves. Your planet.”

“You taught us how to kill each other,” I say. “En masse. You gave us nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, biological warfare and genetic nightmares. You gave us genocide.”

“A sword can’t be—”

“You’re the forge that refined humanity,” I say in my most obnoxious, sarcastic voice that sounds a little bit like Yoda. “Blah, blah, fucking blah.”

He settles into a more relaxed posture, his grin returning. “I have always found you amusing, Jon.”

I flip him off with both hands and step closer, obscuring his line of sight.

“Whether you agree with the...manipulations used to influence your species into a warlike people is of no consequence. You would not exist without it. None of you would. The people you love. The cities you protect with such devotion. All of it exists because you have been infused with a desire to expand, to explore and to fight for those things. You revolt against the idea of being controlled because that is exactly how you were conditioned. It’s an ideal that the founding fathers of the United States fully understood, and not one of them was Ferox.

“Freedom is everything. It is the
right
that unites us. You speak of genocide, but you have yet to comprehend it. The worst genocide in human history was the holocaust of World War II. Between five and eleven million people were killed, seventy-eight percent of them Jewish. The slaughter was confined to Nazi occupied Europe. A single continent.”

“Which the Ferox no doubt organized,” I point out.

“A final lesson, to help the world understand the stakes.”

I feel another swing coming on, but I resist. The girls are almost ready.

“Imagine an even more efficient holocaust not confined to a single continent, or planet. Imagine the slaughter of hundreds of billions, spread across the cosmos, over millennia. Imagine fighting against this unstoppable purge, to the point of extinction, only to rally back, again and again. Finally, upon discovering a species sympathetic to your plight, a victory. You mewl over a few thousand years of manipulated evolution, while we have endured millions of years of evolution and conditioning to the point that we no longer physically resemble the race we started out as.”

He’s actually managed to bait the hook and interest me in his story of cosmic woe. I don’t say anything, but he sees the question in my eyes.

“The Ferox were once Aeros,” he says. “We are now genetically different enough to be considered a different species, but we were once the same, separated only by a subtle shift in skin color, white and gray. What would you do under similar circumstances? Would you roll over and let your species be eradicated, or would you do anything to save them—” He glances at the others congregated behind me. “For the people you love. Freedom, love and loyalty, are emotions
taught
to humanity. Your once primal drives to reproduce have also been refined.”

“Bullshit,” I say.

“An individual with no concept of love will not risk himself for another. Empathy lacking love is nothing more than the curiosity of a sociopath.”

“Says the sociopath,” I say.

“There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

I flinch back, verbally slapped. “Did...did you just quote the
Bible?
”

“The words of the Anomaly,” he says. “You don’t need to love the Ferox, Jon, but when the war comes to your planet, you will fight, and you will join the Ferox, or perish. And that is something your love, and the love of billions, won’t allow. Not without a fight.”

“Well, you’re right about that,” I say. “We’re not going down without a fight. Against the Aeros, or you.”

I step to the side and see a glimmer of surprise on the chubby man’s face, as Lilly flings Maigo past me. She strikes with the force of a wrecking ball, driving her heels into Cole’s chest. There’s no defense against a hit like that, and Cole flies back through the room, into the broad stairwell where he topples down the stairs and out of view. The house shakes when he stops against the brick wall.

We’re about to chase after him, expecting to see a twisted, broken body, but we stop short when we hear his bones breaking. The slick crack of bones, popping of joints and slurp of flesh is impossible to mistake.

Neither is the growl that follows it.

A flowing mane of black hair rises first, followed by a smooth, gray snout framed on either side by three red eyes, six total, and a sharp-toothed snarl. Bony spikes jut from the flesh of his face. A muscular body rises up, followed by a twitching tail tipped with a tuft of black hair. All of Cole’s fat was simply misdirection, hiding powerful mass that looks like a cross between The Rock and a lion. As it steps back onto the hardwood floor, its long claws tap out an irritating rhythm that reveals frenetic energy hidden just beneath the surface of this monstrosity.

The Ferox that used to be Zachary Cole, twists its neck from one side to the other, popping vertebrae into place. It takes a deep breath, filling its powerful chest, and lets it out with a sigh. For a moment, I think the monster might start monologuing again, but he dives to the side, heading for Woodstock.

Despite not standing a chance against the monster, Woodstock balls his fists, and shouts, “Bring it on, Nancy!”

But the attack is a feint. While the Ferox bounds for Woodstock, its tail lashes out around Maigo’s leg and yanks. She falls hard, hitting the floor, and she’s then flung down the staircase. The move is well thought out, and clearly vengeance for Maigo’s attack, but also it’s far from lethal.

Never one to shirk from a fight, Lilly dives into action, raking her claws across the Ferox’s shoulder. The attack draws purple blood and proves that the creature isn’t impervious. But it also makes the alien angry. With a roar that hurts my ears, the Ferox dive-tackles Lilly. Hawkins launches himself at the Ferox’s back, but he’s caught around the waist and tossed across the room, crashing into a work station.

Lilly is pinned.

Collins is bending to pick up her gun, but won’t be fast enough.

“Cole!” I shout. “Don’t!”

The Ferox turns its horrible, alien head toward me and lets out a bark. Then it leaps away from Lilly, bounds across the office, charging through workstations.

Collins and Cooper both track the creature with guns, but they’re vastly different. Collins’s fires lethal rounds. Cooper’s fires tracking darts—the same kind we use to observe the movements of the cryptids we’ve discovered. I grasp Collins’s arms and shove them up just as she fires. The bullet punches into the ceiling. A moment later, Cooper pulls her weapon’s trigger and the small projected device finds its mark in the Ferox’s thick hide.

Monster-Cole jumps Hawkins as he tries to get back up and then flings itself at the broad window stretching across the Crow’s Nest’s east-facing wall. The usual view of the ocean is currently occupied by Hyperion’s face. Glass gives way to the Ferox’s solid mass, shattering and exploding outward.

I run to the broken window in time to see the alien throw itself off the deck below and land in the yard with less effort than it takes me to lift the toilet seat at night. Then it’s gone, bolting around the house.

At the sound of people taking action, I shout, “Everyone stop!”

I turn to find Lilly and Maigo in the stairway leading to the roof. The girls could easily throw themselves from the roof, and could probably catch Cole. But what good would come from that? Would they kill him? Would he kill them? Neither possibility does us any good. I point at Cooper, who holds up the dart gun with a grin. “Let’s see where he goes.”

No one looks happy about it, but we’ve all trained with Hawkins enough to hear his voice urging us to use our brains before our brawn. When the big man gets to his feet and looks at me, I hitch my thumb at the window. “I don’t know about you, but I’m getting
really
tired of replacing this window.”

36

In the moments after Cole’s escape, an adrenaline-fueled FC-P tried to spring into action, but then we got the collective shakes, followed by exhaustion. Cole, no doubt in human form once again, had made his way inland and was now headed toward the West Coast, probably on one of GOD’s private jets. Or maybe he discovered the tracker and put it on a plane. Who knows? Reality feels broken. He’s manipulated us on a level that has left me questioning what’s real. My life for the past few years has been arranged and guided in a way that only God is supposed to do, and even then, most people hate the idea of a higher power influencing their lives. But even that is a manipulation. It’s exactly how the Ferox want us to feel.

Does that make valuing freedom wrong?

Or did they simply teach us a lesson? A long, cruel, sadistic lesson.

Are we even free at all? Or just pawns?

I stare at the bedroom ceiling thinking all of this and more, searching the nooks and crannies of the room for any sign of cameras and listening devices. Do advanced alien species even need to bug a room? They might be able to see and hear us from orbit, for all I know.

Despite all this, I did sleep fairly well. Collins and I all but passed out beside each other. We’re both still fully dressed, lying on top of our blanket.

“Find any?” Collins asks. It’s the first thing she’s said since we hit the mattress.

“Nope,” I say, “But we’ll have the DHS and a team from Zoomb scour the Crow’s Nest from top to bottom for bugs and cameras before I feel comfortable here again.”

“There’s nothing they’re going to see that they haven’t seen already.” Her fingers crawl down my arm and interlace with mine.

Memories of heated nights and...compromising positions flow through my mind. I cringe at the idea that someone, or thing, was watching.

“Try to not let it bother you,” she says.

“You’re not bothered by the idea of some alien watching a video feed of us, jerking off and getting his jollies while you change, or we...”

“Might not be
me
they’re getting off on,” she says.

I turn my head toward her. She’s just a few inches away, her face framed by crazy, red, morning bedhead. She’s adorable, and maybe, somewhere in the world, someone else could be sharing this moment with us.

She pats my cheek. “I know you like Star Trek, where Kirk works his way through a rainbow of alien floozies, but it’s more likely that an alien species finds us as attractive as we do a sheep.”

“Says the person who was a sheriff in the backwoods of Maine. You could yell ‘hey, goat-humper’ and get half the population to turn arou—ouch!”

Collins pulls her fist back, ready to slug my shoulder again.

“Uncle,” I say, rubbing my arm. “But you can’t tell me you never once got called out to a farm for...inappropriate relationship with a farm animal.”

She purses her lips, trying to squelch a smile. She manages to hold on for three seconds before laughing. “Just once. Once!”

“Uh-huh,” I roll onto my back and stare at the ceiling again. There’s a crack that looks a little like a Kaiju. I’ve been trying to find something more pleasant in the crisscrossing lines—a pony or field mouse or something—but my life is full of monsters now. There’s no escaping them. But with Collins, I can at least forget them for a bit. “Thanks for marrying me.”

Her arm slides over my chest. “Sorry I almost didn’t.”

She’s referring to a chunk of months between the destruction of Washington, D.C. and the Tsuchi attacks where she got cold feet. She called off our engagement, and given her previous marriage, I never held it against her. I was just happy she didn’t want to leave me. Married or not, I wanted to be with her. But we’ve been married for a year now, and her past is now officially behind her.