The XCOM project. Mankind's response when imagined science fiction became grim reality. The problems started small. Satellite malfunctions. Anomalous radar contacts. Perfectly plausible disappearances from rural regions.

But it grew. Panic spread like wildfire around the globe as otherworldly creatures descended from the stars in strange ships, burning, killing, snatching. An alliance of countries from around the world formed and activated XCOM, a unit drawing from the best scientists and soldiers of numerous nations. Their mission was to combat the aliens and protect humanity around the globe.

"Central." The voice resonated from speakers under a massive holographic display that threw light to the furthest corners of XCOM's situation room. Even during the graveyard shift, it bustled with activity, with technicians monitoring various reports from around the globe and studying the telemetry from XCOM's satellites.

"This is Central, go ahead, Plumber." A man in his thirties with close-cropped brown hair crossed his arms. By idle habit, he reached up and adjusted the microphone boom on his headset.

"We're approaching the LZ," reported the female voice of Lieutenant Francesca 'Plumber' Giovi. "Setting down just south of the crash site. Piping video feed now."

Central Officer Bradford leaned over the shoulder of a female technician and scrutinized the feed coming into the tech's monitor. The UFO, attacked by one of XCOM's interceptors, had gone down hard in the mountains of rural Japan. A wide swathe had been plowed through the trees, and the ground was rent by a great furrow. Flaming debris had been scattered everywhere in the crash's wake.

"Lima Team is on the ground," reported Plumber.

Bradford cast a sidelong glance at the man standing next to him. "Are you sure sending this team was a good idea? They're awfully green."

Commander Mikhail Chekov had been assigned commander of XCOM operations. Creeping toward his forties, he was still in excellent shape, his face and head clean-shaven. He wore an unadorned uniform of a military style, in contrast to the more business-like attire of most of the personnel in the command center. His features were not yet craggy, but his brown eyes had seen a great deal during his time with the Russian special forces. He was a man used to dealing with an enemy, and that he survived as long as he had through operations well and ill meant he was not one to be trifled with. The perfect candidate, it seemed, based on his strong majority selection by the Council of Nations.

"Our choices are limited, hm?" Chekov spoke accented but readily understood English. With a hand he gestured toward another flashing red icon on the globe, indicating to the abduction spree in South Africa that Strike-One and Voodoo three-one, their other transport, were responding to. "UFO seven went down close to a nuclear power plant. Delays would have been unacceptable."

Still, Chekov did not admonish Bradford for his skepticism. They were doubts he had himself. But they had to do something. XCOM was humanity's best hope. They had to fight the aliens wherever they appeared, and keep the damage to a minimum. The withdrawal of Argentina and India from the Council of Nations may have been mitigated slightly by Sweden's admission, but it still fired Chekov's determination to improve the project's performance.

Four biomonitors pulsed to life on a nearby display, and a visual feed piped in from Lima three's helmet camera. "Remember Lima," said Bradford. "It's unlikely that the entire crew was killed in the crash. Approach the craft with extreme caution."

The four soldiers darted from cover to cover, the broad daylight offering little concealment. Their training served them well, covering one another's flanks, but Chekov sighed as he watched them. They had the right idea, but their execution was still sloppy.

Sergeant Burke walked point, his pump-action shotgun at the ready. His weapon and his eyes swept the forest before him, keeping his attention immediate even as it continued to want to wander forward to the sight of the crashed UFO before him.

Squaddie Raginis, plus recruits Amber and Koch, followed not far behind. Twigs and dead leaves crunched beneath their boots as they pushed through the underbrush toward the downed saucer. "It's quiet," remarked Koch, shaking her head.

Pausing, Raginis realized she was right. There were no birds, no frogs or insects calling out, and the only movement they heard was their own.

"All the wildlife had the sense to clear out," said Amber, giving a dark, humorless chuckle.

"Squad, quiet down," Burke growled into his radio. "Central, we have movement up ahead." He gestured to Raginis. The squad's sniper moved forward, taking up a position behind a tree. The Polish soldier raised his binoculars to his eyes, and scanned over the crashed UFO.

The vaguely circular ship was approximately fifty meters across, with one side crumpled and blown open. Raginis gave a thin-lipped smile, imagining the moment that the high-yield Avalanche missile had blasted that hole into the ship, no doubt killing at least a few "ET's" and causing this crash.

Scuttling about outside the wreck, he saw a trio of small bipeds. Their skin was shiny and gray, their hunched stance and bandy arms more reminiscent of apes. The glimmer of their wide orange eyes was visible even from a hundred meters out, as was the greenish light of their plasma pistols. On his last mission, Raginis had seen bolts from those plasma pistols blast beachball-sized holes in reinforced concrete, and he dreamed of getting his hands on one. A pity the aliens had the foresight to equip their weapons with a mechanism to self-destruct them if the wielder was killed.

"Three 'toids," Raginis murmured to his fellows. "No other contacts."

"Three sectoids." Burke nodded. "Raginis, find a good vantage point. Get ready to light 'em up when we engage. You two, with me." Burke, Amber, and Koch slipped in closer, while Raginis ducked behind a jagged chunk of the UFO's hull that had come loose during the crash and lodged itself a hundred meters from its mother's resting place. The furrow left him a clear field of fire, and now he peered down his rifle scope at the sectoids that still milled about seemingly without aim.

Raginis frowned. Had the alien commander been killed? A chilling, guttural cry split the mountain air, followed by the roar of rocket engines. He caught a flash of movement, and his gut chilled. "Behind you!" he barked into his radio, swinging his heavy rifle around.

Two misshapen constructs hurled toward the remainder of the squad, their bodies looking like a hideous collision between person and jet aircraft that no one had bothered to sort out. Their bodies lacked legs, supported only by arms and the massive boosters mounted into their shoulders. Cybernetic implants were visibly fused to raw, skinless-looking flesh.

The monsters fired plasma pistols as they came, catching three of the XCOM soldiers from the flank. Their barrage went wide of Amber and Burke dove for cover, but Koch went down screaming as superheated plasma washed over her.

"Koch, no!" Amber cried out in shock, his eyes wide with horror as they stared at the smoldering body.

"Fall back!" barked Burke. "Toward Ragi's position!" He keyed his radio. "Cover fire!"

Raginis didn't need to be told even once. Supporting his rifle against a rather convenient notch in the alloy chunk he hid behind, he squeezed off a .338 slug. He cursed as the floater in his sights kept right on going, clearly not hit, and continuing to spray plasma at Burke.

The assault specialist popped out from behind his rock and fired off a load of heavy buckshot. The lead floater lacked antlers but let out a loud bellow as the metal pellets smashed the plating over its right shoulder and drove into the flesh beneath it.

"Now, go!" Burke called to Amber, pumping another round into his weapon.

Amber fired a short burst from his assault rifle in the general direction of the two oncoming floaters, and one of them angled ahead of him, trying to cut him off.

Seeing the angles, Raginis cursed in his native tongue and tweaked his scope. His sights settled over the floater's center of mass, just below the neck, and his finger tightened on the trigger.

Heat washed over Raginis as plasma bolts hissed around his hiding spot. The sectoids, likely the bait for the trap Lima team had walked right into, were now loping toward the sniper's position. Though their aim was atrocious, the imminent threat was enough to force Raginis back.

Burke tugged a grenade from his harness and removed its pin. The priming handle popped loose, and he lobbed the cylinder toward the floaters. Maybe lady luck would smile upon them and both would catch fatal doses of shrapnel.

"Lima one, this is Central. You need to fall back -"

"I know, Central!" Burke ducked as his grenade went off. He wondered if he had scored any kills, but the plasma bolt that evaporated a chunk of the tree next to him put that notion to rest.

"One, this is three!" Raginis had put a rocky ridge between himself and the sectoids, but the higher, more distant ground gave him the sight of more trouble. "We've got two more floaters coming in from the west!"

"More!?" Amber's voice rose in panic. "No, no! We have to get out of here!"

"Central, can we get any air support?" Raginis said. "It's about to get really nasty down here and we're already down a man."

There was a pause as Bradford consulted with someone. "Affirmative, Lima. JASDF is scrambling planes. ETA, fifteen minutes."

Burke's hand clenched into a fist at that news. Air support was welcome, but he knew that in a firefight like this, those fifteen minutes might as well be hours.

Recruit Amber continued to run, his path growing into a beeline back toward the Skyranger's position. The floater chasing him paused, the barrel of its weapon tracking him. Seeing this, Raginis desperately keyed his headset. "Duck!"

A plasma bolt, vibrant green but almost as bright as the sun above streaked out. Amber fell to the ground, a smoking hole in the back of his armor. He gasped, clawing weakly at the dirt, but the floater closed in and did not cease its fire until little remained but a glassy crater.

The other floater had closed with Burke, flushing out of one tree and toward another. The beefy sergeant swung out from the tree's other side and fired his shotgun. The weapon coughed up a deadly payload of deadly lead pellets that splashed against the floater like supersonic hail.

Several pellets cracked the housing on the floater's right booster. A rushing whine emitted from the device, and the floater gave its best approximation of horror before it was consumed in a fiery blast.

"Get back to the transport!" Burke said into the radio. "Do you copy, three? Get out of here!" Harsh static crackled back from his earpiece.

"Burke, Burke, get out of there!" Raginis said into his radio. "Damn it, Burke!" His radio burbled frustratingly at him, resisting even the tried and true field fix of a hard whack to the side of its plastic casing. "Central, what's the ETA on that air support?" Again, no response but static. His radio was dead, it had to have been jamming. He could still see Burke out there fighting for his life, but the other two floaters while spreading out, trying to flank him. And Raginis himself had another floater and those three sectoids to worry about.

So the aliens knew divide and conquer. Plus they had figured out how to jam XCOM's radios, no mean feat considering the communications gear had been specifically made to resist this kind of thing.

Dropping to one knee, Raginis sighted on the sectoids approaching him. A check of the scope's integrated rangefinder showed the grays to be well within range of his rifle. The sectoids on the other hand appeared to have a hard time hitting the broad side of a barn from this range. Raginis had no such problems. His first bullet ripped into one of the sectoids just below the neck, entering and exiting with a shower of yellow-green ichor. The alien folded like a house of cards in a stiff wind, and Raginis swung his weapon around.

A plasma bolt passed near enough to Raginis that he felt some of the exposed skin on his face blister, and a warning tone in his ear signaled that his helmet camera was offline. Looking up from his scope, he saw the floater closing in rapidly. Slinging his long arm, Raginis drew his pistol and opened fire. Round after round snapped from the weapon, several clearly hitting the alien. The cyborg shuddered under the barrage of lead. It raised its arm, but even the light weight of the small pistol-grip weapon shuddered in the creature's weakened grip.

"Boom," hissed Raginis, taking the time to aim one last shot. The magnum round smashed straight into one of the creature's luminous eye sockets, and out through the back of the creature's metallic skull, bringing with it an assortment of bits both organic and cybernetic.

Raginis's headset crackled weakly. "- Plumber. Lima – read me?"

The sniper winced as he saw a distant explosion flash amidst the trees. He recognized the sound as one of XCOM's mark XI fragmentation grenades, and had a feeling that the most of Lima team that would be making it home was one. "This is Lima three, I copy. It's bad, Plumber."

"Jamming is dropping," reported Plumber, the pilot's voice coming in loud and clear. "Lima team, what's your status?"

"Two down, one missing," Raginis said, scurrying back away from the ridge. The remaining two sectoids had closed in, and were finally finding the range. "And I just saw more emerging from the UFO. Central, do you copy?"

"We read you, Lima three. The jets are still ten minutes out."

Hearing the roar of rocket engines, Raginis looked up and saw floaters shooting high into the air. The cyborgs arced toward him, to cut him off or flank him.

"Lima, I'm picking up something on radar," said Plumber.

"We've spotted it as well, Voodoo three-two," said Bradford. "What...?" He trailed off.

"Someone want to tell me what 'it' is?" asked Raginis, looking for cover as he headed back for the dropship.

"What the hell was that? And where's Wilcke?"

"I don't know. That light was just... huge. I thought it was an attack."

"But it didn't even drain our shields..."

"Wait, was that an explosion just now?"

"Yeah, I can see it from up here. What the hell...?"

"Send us the video feed – oh – what!?"

"I'm going in! Get over there as soon as you ground-pounders can."

"But those aren't even Neuroi..."

"It could be a new form of them or something."

"I don't care. They aren't human and what they're shooting at is! Fox Two!"

Raginis readied his rifle again, and breathed as he'd been trained to. Considering he was under fire from three directions, it was no small feat. The sharp crack of his rifle report split the forest air, and the struck floater gurgled as it collapsed in a heap, blood leaking from under its face plating. A savage, humorless grin formed on the sniper's pale lips. At least Charon's ferry would not be a lonely place tonight.

As he worked the bolt of his rifle smoothly, fiery pain exploded across side just below his ribs. A plasma blast had grazed him, burning through the uniform and leaving the flesh blackened and raw. With rapidly numbing fingers, Raginis managed to finish cycling his rifle's bolt. But as he peered down his scope once more, the forest appeared oddly colorless and dark.

The ground bucked beneath Raginis's feet, and he was surprised to see the target in his sights consumed in a fiery explosion. Where the remaining sectoids had stood was now a blasted crater, fragments of their weapons smoldering.

He heard the crackle of heavy cannon fire, followed by a muffled explosion. The scream of jet engines drilled into his ears, making the trooper wince even in his shock-addled state. More missiles streaked down from the sky, striking near the crash site.

"This is Lima three," Raginis rasped into his mic. "I'm hit. Burns. Shock," he managed, sinking to his knees. "Thank the boys... for the air support."

"Lima three, say again," even over the radio, Bradford's confusion was evident. "The JASDF birds are still five minutes out."

"Central, this is Plumber, we've got a bogey in the air. Whatever it is, it just took out the remaining x-rays."

The ground rumbled beneath Raginis again. He looked up, squinting his eyes against the darkness encroaching at the edges of his vision. Two forms with long gun barrels, sloped frontal plating, and heavy tracks rode toward him, and he initially mistook them for main battle tanks. But as the odd, bipedal constructs ground to a halt and two young women jumped down, Raginis's fading mind registered that he must have been hallucinating.

"This one is hurt!" exclaimed Captain Yaira Nafshi, kneeling over the wounded soldier. She winced when she saw where his uniform had been burned away, and the skin beneath had not been much better off. She checked his pulse, finding it weak and intermittent. "Mariya, hurry!"

Senior Lieutenant Mariya Voronkova hastily jumped down from her striker unit, stumbling slightly as she landed. Even as she ran over to the wounded soldier, the Orussian officer couldn't help but wonder what was going on. "I don't recognize that uniform. Are they self-defense forces?"

"At least he's human," Yaira's hand hovered near her sidearm. "I don't know what those creatures that Ji took out were..."

"Maybe they're connected to the Neuroi somehow." As Mariya knelt over the unconscious man, she placed one hand over his forehead and another over his collarbone. The witch inhaled deeply, and felt a familiar warmth flowing to her fingers. Rounded fuzzy brown animal ears sprouted up from the sides of her head, and a stump of a tail grew from the seat of her jumpsuit. A bluish aura pulsed to life around her hands as energy flowed from her body into the soldier's. Her power could not truly heal, but it could strengthen her comrades prior to battle, or preserve the life of someone critically wounded long enough for them to receive proper medical attention.

Yaira tugged her helmet off and raked a hand through her dark hair. It had all started in the late 1930s, when strange obsidian-black flying things had appeared in Earth's skies and begun a war of terror and extermination against mankind. Humanity's only defense had come from the work of Doctor Miyafuji, and his development of the striker unit. Only witches, those born with magical power, could use the constructs to fly and fight back against the Neuroi with a mixture of magic and modern weapons. After years of hard fighting, humanity seemed to have driven the Neuroi away, but two years ago the space monsters had returned and a new war began. A new generation of witches equipped with modernized striker units, including the newer land-based models, lead Earth's defense. "Maybe they are connected," said Yaira at last. "But in two wars with the bastards we've never seen anything like that before."

"Language," Mariya said with the smallest smile, but her eyes remained intense as she transferred energy. "There," she said, exhaling deeply. "That should keep him alive for now. Better raise Komatsu base and tell them to get a medivac over here."

"That's going to be a problem," a voice crackled in over their earpieces.

Mariya blinked. "What do you mean, Ji?"

"I'm not getting any responses on radio," said Ji, her voice oddly rigid. "I'm picking up plenty of traffic, but none of it on the bands we use. No response from Lizbeth, either." That had been the other 'sky witch', Ji's wingmate, but there had been no response since Lizbeth's energy burst had collided with that of the attacking Neuroi.

"I'm sure she's fine," Yaira said at once. "She probably just fried her radio and is heading back to base."

Mariya heard a rustle off the side and snapped her head around. "Yaira, behind you!" But the witch's warning came too late, and a cruel web of electricity arced over Yaira's form. The Zion witch let out a cry of pain before collapsing to the ground.

A disheveled and bloody looking man stood behind her, holding a bulky, squarish hand weapon. He squeezed the trigger again, and in a flash of light Mariya blacked out.

"Central, this is Lima one," Burke's voice was haggard. Blood trickled down his face, and he could still feel burning pain his shoulder where he had taken a piece of shrapnel from his own desperate grenade. "I've neutralized a pair of unknowns. They were doing something to Lima three. I think they might be a new type of thin man. One of them was showing some kind of mammalian features until I hit her with the arc thrower.

He looked up at the towering machines parked nearby. "Central, it looks like they were using some kind of exoskeletal equipment. Look like tanks standing on two legs..." In his mind, it only made sense. Thin men were slippery, but weak in combat. It would fit that a similar infiltrator would need a technological edge to keep up if the fighting started.

"Perhaps a new surface warfare weapons system," said Doctor Shen. In charge of the engineering sections of XCOM, it wasn't often that the aging man observed missions from the situation room, but the events he was hearing of intrigued him. "Do you see that bogey, Lima one? Our radar is having a great deal of difficulty tracking it."

"Negative," said Burke, shaking his head before realizing there was no one around to see it.

"We should bring the exoskeletons in for study," said Doctor Shen.

"No way they'll fit in the skyranger," said Burke. "See if the locals can loan us transports to haul them back to base with."

"One, what is is three's condition?" Commander Chekov asked, despite being known to rarely key his headset.

Burke knelt over the unconscious Raginis. "I think he's stable, but he's burned pretty bad. Looks like a plasma graze. If it had hit him dead-on, I'd be pulling a delta." Ever since XCOM's first operation ended in disaster for delta team, a near total loss had been called as such, and the team name had been retired.

"Get three back to the skyranger, then load up the prisoners. Central out."

XCOM Headquarters, Central Europe

Central Officer Bradford stood in the main lab, gazing into the interrogation chamber. A thick sheet of wraparound plexiglass provided those outside the stark, brightly lit room with a clear view of its interior and its unconscious occupant. She appeared to be a rather short teenage girl with ivory skin and wavy black hair. Her military uniform did not conform to any known on Earth, nor did her unit patch or even her flag, though the thick white, red, and blue striping did look similar to Russia's flag. Her features looked soft and delicate, nothing like the previous infiltrators that were picked out so easily. "So, that's one of the new thin men?"

"That was the field man's initial suspicion, yes," said Doctor Vahlen, head scientist at XCOM headquarters. Rarely seen outside her labcoat, with her brown hair drawn into a tight bun, the only thing separating the woman from a stereotypical scientist look was her lack of glasses. Vahlen oversaw all the research suites in the facility, ranging from autopsies to research and development. "It would now appear that 'man' would not be technically correct. Cursory analysis of the DNA is also... troubling."

"How so, doctor?" The doors hissed shut behind Commander Chekov as he strode over.

Vahlen took a sip of water before continuing. "While thin men look just human enough to blend in with a crowd, it's very much just skin deep. Their blood is not even the right color, and the DNA is wholly different." She passed Chekov a tablet showing a DNA analysis. "This specimen on the other hand, is physically indistinguishable, lacking even the bizarre jointing. And the DNA, aside from a few minute abnormalities, is entirely human."

"It could be a new breed of infiltrator," Bradford said, looking grim. "One that's much harder to weed out. What about their exoskeletons?"

"There's no hypersonic transport large enough for them," said Commander Chekov. "The C-2s carrying them aren't due for another three hours."

"I imagine Doctor Shen will want to be there when they arrive." Doctor Vahlen smiled, knowing what it was like to be that excited to crack open a new alien mystery. "In the mean time, with your permission, we will begin the interrogation immediately."

Before Chekov could answer, a voice over the announcement system interrupted them. "Commander to the situation room. Commander to the situation room."

Chekov gave a rueful, amused chuckle. "Being in charge, someone always needs you." He tapped his earpiece. "Situation room, this is the commander. Report."

"Sir," said the voice on the other end. "We have an unidentified contact on radar, heading in our direction at mach 2. It's proving hard to get a fix on. We've never seen anything like it before. Anti-air defenses are coming online now, but even visual scanning is showing nothing."

"Understood," said Chekov. "Declare base alert level two. I'm on my way." He turned to Vahlen. "Is other one secure?"

"Yes, commander. It is in a holding cell on level two."

"Good." Chekov turned his brown eyes to the unconscious form in the cell. "Vahlen, do not proceed yet with the interrogation. You may want to get your team to the shelters until this bogey has been dealt with."

"Aren't you going to report to the shelter, Doctor Vahlen?" a member of XCOM security approached the chief scientist from behind, looking slightly nervous. "It's not mandatory until level one, but I would recommend it."

Doctor Vahlen, staring at the captive she had not yet been cleared to interrogate, waved the soldier away. "Studying aliens and their weaponry always carries some risk. Besides, I have every confidence in our defenses."

"You shouldn't." Doctor Vahlen heard a menacing click come from behind her as what felt all too much like the barrel of a gun nestled itself against the base of her skull. "You there, with the doughnut crumbs in your mustache. Weapon down!"

Flustered, the soldier brushed at his neatly-trimmed beard, before spotting the distortion in the air behind Doctor Vahlen. His weapon, a compact, bullpup-configuration sub machine gun, rose toward the distortion.

"I said weapon down!" the voice, clearly female, rose in volume. "Or so help me I'll..."

Unable to even see the threat, the guard carefully set his weapon down on the floor. As he did so however, he pressed the panic button on his radio, sending out a silent alert. "Okay, now what?"

"You're going to tell me what the hell you think you're doing capturing witches on UN business."

"Witches?" Doctor Vahlen echoed in confusion. "And what's this about UN business? We encountered you near a crashed UFO." They had never encountered aliens with a native understanding of any Earth language before, and here this one acted as though XCOM was out of line.

"You did," the pistol dug a little harder into Vahlen's neck. "And in return for my saving your asses you abduct my squadmates. And what, I wonder, is that chamber for? Doesn't look like any medical suite!"

"It's an interrogation chamber," Vahlen said with tart honesty. "It's where we study and vivisect you and any other invading aliens."

"Me and any other aliens?" The extended gun, a standard-looking military issue semi automatic, shook. "I'm not an alien, you chang nhyu. And I've never heard of anyone taking Neuroi alive for study, they're a bit big to cut open with a scalpel, don't you think?"

"Neuroi?" Again, the girl used words Vahlen didn't understand. At least 'witch' had some meaning to it, but Neuroi was completely, no pun intended, alien to her.

"Perhaps we should start simple," Doctor Vahlen said, trying not to shiver. She could deal with all sorts of blood and gore and unpleasant thoughts, but she was not used to being in personal danger like this. "I am Doctor Vahlen. I'm from Austria. I'm a scientist."

"Never heard of it," snapped the voice. "Ji. Republic of Gauri. Witch flier."

"Never heard of that," the soldier said patiently, his eyes flicking toward the door. Any second now, an armed security detail ought to be bursting in.

"Don't care," Ji said flatly. "Let my friends go now and maybe I won't let the next Neuroi that comes this way have its fun burning this hole to the ground."

"Might I ask," began Vahlen. "Exactly what is this 'Neuroi' you keep referring to?"

The pressure against Vahlen's neck eased slightly. "If you've never heard of the Neuroi, maybe this place isn't so bad after all." Despite the softness of her words, Ji's tone remained bitter.

"Perhaps not," said Vahlen. "We may not have your Neuroi, but we still have the sectoids and their ilk to deal with."

Ji gave a shuddering breath. "Your enemies are aliens. Mine are too. Sounds like we're on the same side."

"Yes," Vahlen breathed, still very tense.

"So, being on the same side," Ji went on. "I don't think holding cells or interrogation chambers are appropriate places for Mariya there or Yaira." She withdrew her pistol, and the distortion around her slid away. Her form was revealed as an impressive if not towering 5'8", fit and toned, while her skin tone, dark brown hair, and dark, almond-shaped eyes made her appear of east Asian descent. Her attire looked like a military flightsuit from the waist up, but ended in short shorts, and her feet were bare.

"Now!" Bradford said into his headset. The situation room had been monitoring the standoff in the lab via security cameras since Corporal Burnside had triggered his alert. Immediately the lab doors hissed open, and a small cylinder was lobbed into the room. The flashbang clanked as it landed and rolled. The detonation filled the room with an overload of light and sound. Doctor Vahlen staggered away from Ji while Burnside fell to the ground and groped for his weapon.

Ji's vision swam and danced, but she could still make out the shapes of soldiers rushing into the room. One of them held a weapon identical to the one that had been used to capture the others. The woman holding it squeezed the trigger, but Ji was faster. A circle of blue light burst into being in front of Ji, filled with sweeping lines and glowing runes as it slowly rotated. The electrical discharge of the arc thrower splashed harmlessly across the barrier.

"No effect!" yelled the woman, before switching back to a shotgun. She and a half dozen others opened up with precision fire, hammering Ji's shield with lead. The shield rippled minutely with each impact, appearing now as a puddle in a downpour.

One after another, crumpled bullets and flattened pellets collected on the floor until a series of clicking sounds were heard. All five security operators had emptied their weapons to no apparent effect. Momentary surprise washed over them, for even the experienced operatives had never seen an alien that could stand up to that much firepower. Several went for reloads while others drew sidearms.

Ji leveled her pistol at the soldier furthest to the left. "Bang!" she said, moving onto the next. "Bang, bang, bang, bang!" She made a show out of flipping her safety on and then holstering her pistol. "Now, if I wanted you dead, you would be."

"Lower your weapons." The face of Commander Chekov appeared on one of the lab monitors. The security team complied, though Ji noticed they did not put them on safe. In return, she dispelled her shield. "Now then." Chekov turned his attention to the intruder. "You have a name, young lady?"

"Lieutenant Ji Kim," she said, snapping off a crisp salute. "Republic of Gauri Air Force, on assignment with the 309th Expeditionary Air Wing."

"Gauri," said Doctor Vahlen, rubbing her forehead. "Is that a country of Earth? Where is it on the map?"

Ji wrinkled her brow in confusion, but after a glance at the security operatives decided to answer. "It's along the eastern coast of the Asian continent, centered about thirty eight degrees north by one twenty six east. It's just west of Fuso."

"That's the location of Korea," murmured Doctor Vahlen.

"A unified Korea," said Chekov.

"She's also been speaking of alien invaders called the Neuroi," said Vahlen.

"Yes," Ji said bitterly. "They're huge black flying things. They shoot lasers and continually regenerate battle damage until you blast their core. Only witches can fight them effectively."

"Considering the job you did here, I'm not surprised," Bradford appeared beside the commander.

"Alright," said Chekov. "Assuming that you aren't some new generation of infiltrator, how is that you remember an Earth completely different from ours? Different country names, different aliens..."

Another speaker appeared behind Chekov. "Commander," said Doctor Shen, the bespectacled, balding man walking into frame. "I believe I have a theory. I did some checking of our satellite readings for the mission area, and I discovered an unusual energy burst shortly before Ji rescued Lima team. From there, one must delve into quantum mechanics for an explanation... I suspect these young women came from a parallel universe."

"A parallel universe?" Bradford shook his head. "This isn't science fiction, doct..." He trailed off as Chekov gave him a look. "Right."

"It is just a theory," continued Doctor Shen. "But it does answer all our questions at hand. Their sudden appearance, their different technologies, political geology, and extraterrestrial problems."

Doctor Vahlen, who had been looking over a tablet, sank heavily into a chair. Her tablet clattered to the ground, lost by a shaking hand. Her face was pale, and it took her a moment to speak when she saw everyone staring. "I just completed a search of that... witch's DNA, looking for specific markers. The aliens' genetic engineering always leaves certain traces, no matter the species, sectoid, floater... and she possesses no such markers."

Ji made an impatient noise of agreement, tapping her bare foot on the cold metal floor. "Now, let my friends go. We're not your enemy." The girl's eyes glinted dangerously as if to say, 'but if you keep this up, we will be.'

"Do it," said Commander Chekov. "Once her companions have regained consciousness, I would like to discuss things with all of you in one of the conference rooms."