XCOM: Enemy Beyond 5: Patient Hymn

Anna Sing woke up in an unfamiliar room. It almost looked like an apartment. There was a bed in the corner, a small en-suite bathroom, and a table with two chairs in the centre. An air conditioner hummed softly overhead. In fact. the only thing out of the ordinary about the room was the lack of windows.

Anna shook her head. She was still jumpy after so many hours of running and hiding. Feeling... well, feeling safe felt weird.

A woman entered through the door, a door that blended in almost perfectly with the wall. She wore a white lab coat, stained slightly green in places, and she carried a clipboard. "Ms. Sing?" she asked. "Please take a seat," she said, gesturing to the table. Anna did as she asked, warily.

"There's no need to be afraid," the stranger said, sitting down across from her. "You're safe here."

"Where am I?"

"That's classified."

"Who are you?"

"Ms. Sing, you do not have the clearance to know anything about this organisation," the woman said. She leaned forward onto the table and folded her arms. "Whether or not that will change depends on how this interview goes."

She clicked a pen and held it over her clipboard, ready to write. "Name?"

Anna was taken aback. "My name? But... you know it already."

"It's a formality. Name?"

"Anna Sing."

They talked for a full hour. She answered questions on her background, on her personality, and on even the smallest details of her abduction. Anna could feel a headache starting to throb in the back of her skull.

The woman's watch beeped. "That's all for today," she said, standing up.

"Today?" Anna asked, leaping out of her chair. "You're not releasing me?"

"You're too valuable to us for that to happen," the woman explained on her way out of the door. "You know too much."

The door closed with a click, and Anna knew it had been locked. She didn't bother trying to open it or screaming for her freedom. She was too emotionally drained from her ordeal to even cry. She laid down on the uncomfortable bed. It wasn't long before sleep came, and with it a peaceful oblivion.

~

"Fascinating," Vahlen said, gazing at the alien power generator. It was a rough cylinder of metal two and a half metres tall, lit from within by an eerie green glow. This relatively small device had provided enough power for an entire alien ship to remain aloft, unburdened by gravity. The lead engineer was currently digging through the guts of the device.

"Do you have anything to report, Doctor Shen?" she asked. The workshops were not her favourite place to be in XCOM's headquarters, but her limited team of scientists had no-one with knowledge of such a device. She stood in one of the side-chambers of the workshop, away from the activity of the conveyor belts and robotic arms.

The engineer, an aged Asian man, straightened up and brushed himself off. His overalls were covered in oil and grease stains. "So far as I can tell, Doctor, it's harmless. Nothing any more radioactive than normal background levels you'd expect for a high-altitude craft."

He waved an arm, inviting Vahlen to step up onto the platform he was standing on. She nervously took his hand and joined him. She could now see into the core of the machine, where a luminescent cluster of bright green crystals floated in the air, rotating slowly.

"And this isn't radioactive?"

"Not at the moment. It's suspended by the same gravity manipulation we saw on the UFO. It seems to hold back the gamma radiation from the crystals. There are banks of instruments up there." Shen pointed to some iridescent lumps in the shell of the generator. "They were quite useful in analysing the device. The core requires no fuel whatsoever. From readings we took while it was still active, it just emits energy at a steady rate, with no loss of mass or emission of waste. It's more efficient than a fusion reactor, but can only put out so much power per second."

"More efficient than fusion?" Vahlen said, frowning. Particle physics was not her strong point, but she had dabbled in a number of scientific fields. "But that would imply matter-antimatter annihilation, or something similarly powerful..."

Shen nodded. "It's all Greek to me, I'm afraid. I don't think we have anyone on staff who can figure this one out at the moment. However, I can draw up plans for a larger version. We can't afford it right now, but in the future..."

"It's a possibility," Vahlen said, the ghost of a smile on her lips.

~

Sanchez jogged on the treadmill, panting for breath. Sweat dripped from his forehead onto the ground of the fitness centre in the barracks. The alien bioweapon he had breathed in had damaged his lungs, leaving him gasping after exercises that he could formerly have done without breaking a sweat.

He stopped, barely able to breathe. His comrade, Cameron Ross, glanced over from his treadmill. "Everything alright?"

"I'll be fine," Sanchez spluttered. "Just a minute..."

"Nah, you won't. Give it a rest for a while, you mad bastard." This last remark was emphasised with a playful punch to Sanchez's shoulder.

Sanchez nodded. "I'll be back soon."

Behind them, Diaz threw blows into a punching bag along with a rookie. Sanchez sat heavily on the bench near them, mopping his brow with a cloth. The fact that he wasn't as good as he used to be was understandable. He was forty-two, after all. But being this unfit was not a familiar situation. It didn't sit well with him.

"Want to join in, Fern?" Diaz asked, taking her eyes from her target for the first time that morning. She paused for a minute to breathe, unwinding the wrappings from her hands. A jogger (Kim Evans, the American recruit, Sanchez reckoned) ran past them.

"Not a chance," Sanchez said with a smirk. "I'm here to chat with the new guys."

The Commander had decided to hire some more of the best soldiers that the Council members could offer. New recruits would be an important element of the initiative. Three had recently arrived.

"What's your name, kid?" he asked. The man he addressed looked over. He was dark-skinned, with the build of a boxer. The look in his eyes reminded Sanchez of a bulldog; tough, but not necessarily vicious. "Roberts," he said. "Adam Roberts."

"Your accent," Sanchez said, mulling it over in his head. "British, yes. Manchester?"

Adam smiled. "Right on the money. Born and raised a Red Devil. I hear you're the expert in LMGs around here?"

Sanchez tilted his head to the side. "I wouldn't say expert. You learn quickly when you're in the field."

"Against ET." Roberts gave a deep laugh. "I still can't quite believe it. Little grey men."

"They're real," Bos said next to him. She was deep in thought, meditating on the ground. She didn't open her eyes. "Don't make light of them. They're the greatest threat our species has ever faced."

"God, I bet you're real fun at parties," Roberts said with a roll of his eyes.

The intercoms spoke, drowning out the start of Bos' reply. "Xenia Diaz, Anna Bos, Dirk de Graaf, Adam Roberts to the Skyranger," they droned, before repeating their message.

Sanchez shook his head. "I guess they've noticed I'm still not ready for another go." He snapped a quick salute at Roberts. "Good luck out there."

Adam returned the salute. "I'll give 'em hell for you."

~

"This is Central, I'm receiving you." Bradford listened to the report from the field agent. "What do you mean you think you saw a snake? What the hell does that have to do with anything?" he shouted. "If you give me this crap one more time, you're right back to floor-mopping."

Bradford leaned back into his office chair in Mission Control and rubbed at the bridge of his nose. Around him, half a dozen more personnel dealt with sketchy reports and shaky camera footage of aliens. Nine times out of ten, it was absolutely nothing, but if they missed even one actual report, dozens of people could pay the price.

"Sir!" one of the comms officers shouted. "We're getting something from Italy!"

"Good work, Chulski!" Bradford shouted. No matter how bad things got, he prided himself on never forgetting a name. "Get that feed on screen!"

The footage, straight from YouTube, was projected in front of the hologlobe. It showed a shaking view of a Florentine street, all tan arches and small windows. The sky above them was lit up by a dozen shining lights. A drop-pod, glowing with the heat of its descent, slammed into the side of a building ahead, shaking the ground. Bulky shapes emerged from the smoke, but the recorder was turning and fleeing.

More alerts popped up, one by one, across the globe. Another wave of alien drop-pods falling from the sky over Bloemfontein. A wave of strange sightings and disappearances in Canberra. Panic in the streets of Florence. The Council called for aid, and XCOM were the only ones that could help.

Bradford sprinted from Mission Control and took the short elevator trip to the Situation Room. It took only thirty seconds, but the trip felt like hours. By the time Bradford had entered the room, the Commander had already taken his place behind the desk and was reviewing the reports. He was his usual dark silhouette, studying computer monitors filled with information on the attacks.

"Another three choices. Two more missed chances to help," the Commander sighed. Bradford found himself worrying about the pressure the man was under. Making these decisions couldn't be easy.

"Don't worry about me, Bradford," the Commander said, distracting Bradford from his train of thought. "I wouldn't be doing this job if the Council didn't think I could take the stress."

"How did you know I-"

"I'm good at reading people." There was a short pause. "Has there been any progress with the captive?" the figure asked suddenly. Bradford reckoned he must be buying time to think about their options.

"Ah, no, Commander," he said. "She's being cooperative, but we just aren't learning anything new from her. It's quite likely she doesn't know anything else. What should we do with her?"

"Retain her," he replied. "If we let her go, the world would only panic more when they hear what she saw. We'll head to South Africa," he decided, changing the subject again. "We have to spread our missions around the world. If we ignore any one region for too long, they'll panic."

Bradford nodded and made to leave, mentally preparing himself to deal with the representatives of the Council members they hadn't aided. No matter how often he explained that XCOM couldn't be everywhere at once, they never understood.

The things that Sing had seen, though... They burned in the back of his mind. The creatures that she'd seen would be unpleasant to deal with.

But, he thought, we're going to have to deal with them, sooner or later.

~

"What are we in for, Sweaters?" Diaz asked, as the team sat in the Skyranger.

Bradford tried to ignore her latest nickname for him. "We're looking at three more attacks. Alien forces appear to be abducting civilians again, though for what I don't like to think."

"Maybe they like how we taste?" Roberts suggested. Everyone in the Skyranger stared at him silently. "What? It's definitely an option."

"Unfortunately," Diaz said, "it is a possibility."

"No way," de Graaf replied. He was a short, balding man, brought on this mission due to his South African heritage. "They come God only knows how far just to eat us? Impossible. There's no logic in it."

"People aren't always logical," Roberts added. "It could be some cultural thing. A tradition. Find a planet, see how the people taste, then start rounding them up."

"Bradford?" Bos interrupted, folding her arms across her chest. "The mission briefing?"

"As I was saying," Bradford said, "we're dropping you into Bloemfontein in South Africa for the next operation. We've received reports that don't match any aliens we know of. Be ready."

~

It was the middle of the morning in Bloemfontein. The Skyranger touched down in the middle of the sun-drenched street. The rear ramp opened onto the scorched, cracked pavement, and the strike team exited, scanning for any sign of the hostiles. Diaz took point. As the soldier with most combat experience against the enemy, she had been chosen for this mission.

The enemy was not immediately visible, but their technology was. Their drop-pods had landed in several locations along the street, tearing apart the ground and destroying cars. One had demolished a graffiti-stained wall, leaving a pile of colourful rubble and red brick dust. Others, as they had seen from the air, had come down on top of buildings, and in a few cases had smashed through their roofs.

"This place must have been chaos half an hour ago," Roberts said. "Where is everyone?"

Bos pointed silently to the entangled green bodies that surrounded the drop-pods. The ones that XCOM had recovered from the first abductions had taken some time to reawaken. The coating, it seemed, was also a powerful sedative.

"Hold up," Diaz said. There was something strange in front of them. It had landed next to a lamp-post, on the corner of the street, not far from where the Skyranger had touched down. It resembled the other pods, with a metallic silver coating and a similar shape. It differed in that the top half rotated constantly, spinning around despite the lack of any visible support. A faint orange mist swirled from under the top half, dissipating quickly into the air.

"That object is different from the others," Vahlen said, stating the obvious. "It does not appear to be the same type of "pod" that we've seen used by the aliens during their abduction operations. We may gain new insights if we recover it."

"And how do you plan on doing that?" Roberts said. "We haven't got a clue what the hell it is. Could be a bomb."

The Commander's voice echoed through the radio. "Investigate the device."

"You're up, de Graaf!" Diaz said. Dirk obediently ran forward, taking cover behind the device. It did not respond to his presence.

Doctor Shen reported in, observing through the cameras in the soldier's armour. "This appears to be a containment device of some kind. We can only assume it has an internal self-destruct mechanism like the other alien equipment. We need to deactivate it."

"How do I do that?" de Graaf asked.

"There appears to be a button on the side."

Dirk looked at the side of the device, found the circular button, and pressed it with his fist before leaping back. The device's lid spilt into four pieces, which settled neatly into slots on its sides. An orange pillar, glowing brightly, emerged from the container with a flare of orange mist.

"Until we can ascertain if that substance is toxic, stay away from it," Bradford warned.

Vahlen seemed to happily ignore him, and continued. "There may be additional canisters like this one in the area. The more we can recover, the more we'll learn about what's inside them."

"Any others you find may have operational self-destruct modules," Shen interrupted. "Be careful."

"Acknowledged," Diaz said. She considered her options. Directly in front of them was a diner of some sort, while the roads stretched off on both sides. "Left," she decided, sending her squad into cover behind the abandoned trucks and cars on the road. They moved forward, the Commander's voice occasionally ordering them to pause or take a different path.

"I think I've got something," Bos reported. She had advanced furthest, and was sheltering behind a light blue hatchback. She squinted at it down the sights of her rifle. "Diaz, I've found another canister over here," she reported. It had landed next to a shop, and broken glass littered the ground from its window-shattering descent.

"Got it," Diaz said. "Bos, de Graaf, you take care of it. Roberts and I will head through this restaurant."

Diaz felt rather proud of herself. She'd never actually given orders before, but between Sanchez and the Commander, she had no shortage of people to learn from. She and Roberts peered through the windows of the diner. The place was deserted; it would have been reasonably early in the morning here when they attacked.

"See anything?" she asked Roberts.

"Nothing," he replied. Diaz opened the door quietly and slipped inside. The wooden floor in the diner creaked under her feet. "No activity," she reported to the rest of the squad.

Bos moved towards the object, hunkering down behind the tables and chairs outside an ice cream parlour, which was next to the diner that Roberts and Diaz were exploring. She motioned for de Graaf to advance to the object, and he did so. As he searched for the button on this device, Bos heard a faint sound in the distance. She looked into the deserted ice-cream parlour. "What was-"

It seemed to happen in slow-motion. A hulk of twisted flesh and blackened metal, screaming at the top of its lungs while engines roared and belched flame, hurtled down from above in an arc. It knocked de Graaf off his feet and grabbed him by the ankle. Bos fired desperately as it soared into the air, carrying the helpless soldier with it.

It stopped ascending and floated in the air, giving Bos a proper look at it. It was a greyish-brown alien, face covered by a breathing mask. It had no legs whatsoever; there was nothing from the waist down. From the back, there sprouted a pair of what looked like jet engines, pouring out smoke and fire as they kept the monster aloft. Worst of all were the eyes; they were tiny and reddish, maddened and tormented by pain.

It looked at the struggling de Graaf. He had dropped his rifle in a panic, and was trying to reach his pistol. The alien held a shining silver rifle in its other hand, and it calmly fired it at the soldier. Dirk de Graaf screamed as the superheated gas ate away at his face and upper torso, armour melting away in rivers, skin peeling and turning black.

Bos ignored her horror and sent a stream of bullets into the creature's shoulder. It bellowed in pain, and seemed to notice her. It looked directly at her with those insane eyes, and dropped de Graaf. He hit the ground with a crunch, and Bos knew instinctively he wouldn't be getting back up. The alien was joined by another two just like it, jerking through the air on columns of black smoke. They made a harsh, throaty sound that Bos could tell was laughter.

"Hostiles!" Bos shouted into the mike as she sprinted to better cover. A hail of plasma fire impacted behind her as she ran. "I need backup!"

Diaz and Roberts moved like lightning through the diner. Roberts kicked open the door at the back, hoping to move around through the alleyways and flank the aliens. He ran through the door, followed by Diaz, only for both of them to screech to a halt upon seeing the small pack of Sectoids clustered around an unconscious civilian.

The simian aliens noticed them immediately. Diaz reflexively fired her shotgun when she saw them, blowing the legs of one Sectoid out from under it. The other three aliens scuttled into cover behind corners and dumpsters.

"To hell with this!" Roberts yelled. He tugged a grenade from his belt and pulled the pin. It whistled softly through the air as he threw it towards the aliens. The Sectoids scurried away when they saw the grenade. It exploded in a fiery blast that shook the ground, but hit none of them.

"Crap," Roberts said, huddled next to Diaz as plasma from the enemy's pistols rained down around their cover, an old dumpster. "They're learning."

Diaz poked her head out slightly. One of the Sectoids was hiding behind a wooden shipping crate. It didn't seem like very good cover.

"Backup! Now!" Bos shouted in her ear.

"We'll be there soon!" Diaz roared back. She pointed out the alien's flimsy shelter to Roberts. He gave a grin and hefted his LMG into position, before turning it into a pile of wooden splinters with a hail of lead. The Sectoid was killed quickly, perforated in a dozen places.

The remaining Sectoids did their fancy trick again. Purple light flowed from the head of one to the other, who seemed envigorated by the psychic ability. The source scrabbled away on all fours, while the other one remained behind. Diaz saw her chance, and jumped out from cover. Operating on instinct, she dodged to one side slightly before the plasma bolt could hit her. She fired her shotgun once, shredding the Sectoid's torso into a greenish pulp.

Roberts advanced behind her, eyes alert for any sign of the remaining Sectoid. He rounded the corner, scanning the area. He felt it before he could see it, a terrible burning feeling in his side and the hiss of scorched flesh. He spun around and fired, and was rewarded with a dying scream from the last Sectoid.

"Roberts, how bad is it?" Diaz asked, hurrying over.

"Not bad," he said through gritted teeth. He collapsed against the wall of the building. "Been worse. Keep going. I'll get the canister."

Diaz moved at a dead sprint, kicking open the back door of the ice-cream parlour, dodging an overturned table, and vaulting through the broken window to arrive near Bos' location. The new aliens had elected to hide behind vehicles on the street, just as Bos had. As Diaz watched, one of them soared above cover for an instant. Bos took its arm off in a hail of bullets, and it sank back to the ground, shrieking and trailing lime-green fluid.

"Reloading!" Bos shouted, and Diaz saw her chance. The aliens hadn't seen her. Diaz took her grenade from her belt, tugged out the pin, and rolled it along the ground. It came to rest under the van that two of these aliens were huddled behind. The grenade detonated in a storm of flames, sending shrapnel and pieces of van whizzing through their bodies. The aliens were blown apart or exploded where they stood, the shards hitting something vital in their engines.

Diaz shook her head briefly, her ears ringing from the explosion, and surveyed the street. There was only a single alien left. It was crippled, broken by the force of the blast. Its engines flared irregularly as it crawled towards her, its weapon destroyed or forgotten. It still snarled in pain and madness.

Bos calmly walked over and shot it in the head. Then, she did the same for each of the others, just to make absolutely certain. When she had finished, she looked at Diaz.

"Roberts?" she asked, her face not betraying any emotion.

In response, Diaz glanced to her right. Roberts had staggered up to the container and pressed the button, deactivating it. Now, he had slid to the ground against it. He saw them and waved half-heartedly.

"And Dirk?" Diaz asked.

Bos didn't reply, but began to walk over to Roberts. Diaz signalled the all-clear to command, and overhead, she could hear the drone of the approaching clean-up crew in their helicopters. She spoke into the radio reluctantly.

"Soldier down. Repeat, Dirk de Graaf confirmed as K.I.A."

~

Anna lay on the bed. It was the fifth day of her captivity. Her new captivity: by humans, not by aliens, though she had started to wonder if she had been better off with the extraterrestrials. Every day, one scientist or another came in, asking her the same questions over and over, hoping for some tiny scrap of information about those damn aliens.

This time, it was different. A man she hadn't seen before, wearing a thick sweater with a strange symbol on it. He sat down in the chair nearest the door, the same place the scientists always sat.

"I've told you everything I know," Anna said, not even bothering to open her eyes. "Either let me out, or let me rot in peace. No more questions."

"That's not why I'm here, Ms. Sing," the scientist said. He sounded vaguely American. "You can ask the questions."

Anna opened one eye slightly, not really believing him. "Fine. Who are you?"

"My name is Central Officer Bradford."

"Where am I?"

"Several hundred metres under Bavaria in Germany."

"Smartass. What is this place?"

"The headquarters of an organisation named XCOM, devoted to fighting against the aliens."

That got Anna's attention, and she sat up on her bed. "I assumed you were some Men In Black-style group." She paused. "You aren't doing a great job of it, are you?"

"What makes you say that?"

"Because you're losing. I read the papers in Salvador, even though I can't speak Brazilian. I understood enough. Los Angeles is on fire. There are twenty dead and twice that missing in Lyon. Probably there've been even more attacks since I got here, am I right? I can tell from your face that I am. Why aren't you helping?"

Bradford stood up. "We are!" He shouted. "Everywhere we can, we've sent soldiers. Innocent men and women, giving their lives for scraps of metal and piles of corpses!"

The man looked exhausted suddenly, and Anna felt a sudden wave of pity. He looked like he had the weight of the world on his shoulders.

"Nothing but metal and corpses," he murmured.

"Why haven't you let me out?" Anna asked.

"Anna, sometimes, we are cold. We have to calculate where we can save, where we have to let people die. We weigh up whether we can let an innocent woman free, or whether it is better to keep what she knows from the world." He looked at Anna with eyes that had seen too much. "We have to do this to survive. But we're cold, not cruel. You will be let out again, someday. I promise you."

~

Diaz sat in the medbay, next to Roberts. He had received some severe burns to his side, but he was recovering quickly. Bos was with them, pacing back and forth.

"How are you holding up?" Bos said. "The burns seemed pretty bad."

"I'll be fine," Roberts said. "I can't get up now, but I'll be right as rain before you know it."

"Those things," Diaz said. "What they did to de Graaf. I..."

"They enjoyed it," Roberts spat. "We saw the footage from your helmet, Bos. Those bastards laughed."

Bos shook her head. "I don't let it get to me. We're going to lose more people before this war is over. We need to stay strong."

"That's a pessimistic attitude," Diaz said.

"I'm realistic. There's a difference."

Roberts shook his head. "You've got to mourn. If we don't... well, we're no better than them, are we? We're human, and they ain't."

~

Later that day, Sanchez showed Diaz the memorial wall he'd set up. The pictures were still pinned to the wall, not far from the cafeteria. The candles still burned below them. Sanchez kept them lit and had new ones ordered in as necessary.

"I didn't know them," Diaz said, her hand brushing against the picture of Murakami. "I wasn't recruited until afterwards."

"I know," Sanchez said. "Losing a soldier is always difficult, especially when we need all the support we can get. Is there anything you want to add?"

Diaz took out a picture of Dirk. It was him last week, just after they'd recovered the alien abductee. It showed him mixing up a cocktail for the rookies in the bar. Everyone was laughing and joking, and Diaz could still remember the electric thrill of excitement in the air.

Diaz pinned the picture to the wall. Sanchez offered her a lighter, and she used it to light another one of the thick, white-waxed candles. She placed it beneath the picture. Both soldiers simply looked at the wall for a while, as a fourth ghost joined the other three.

~

"A curious substance," Shivali Chaudhry said. "I wonder..."

Doctor Chaudhry, XCOM's resident specialist in materials science, had been analysing the mysterious canister they had retrieved from the field. The metal container had folded open like origami, revealing a smaller cylinder of hexagonal cross-section. It was defying attempts at analysis. It didn't rate on the Moh hardness scale, because they couldn't find a way to scratch it; it seemed bizarrely light when they measured its density; and the attempt at taking a sample had revealed that it self-repaired.

Chaudhry laid the cylinder down on the desk and tried to imagine what it could be used for. It wouldn't be a useful building material, it didn't seem to be in any way edible...

"Wait," she murmured. "We haven't checked how well it conducts electricity..."

She used a pair of clamps to connect wires to the artifact, humming all the while. She soon had instruments connected into the circuit, and hooked the entire thing into a transformer leading into the base's power supply. The apparatus was safely encaged in a secure testing chamber, just in case.

"This is Doctor Chaudhry," she said, her voice muffled by the hazmat suit she had donned just in case, "conducting a test of the artifact's electrical resistance. Test one, commencing."

She flicked the switch, and there was a brief, intense flash of light. When Chaudhry could see again, the artifact was gone. The interior of the testing chamber was completely covered in a thin layer of orange liquid, which even as she watched was dripping onto the floor.

"Eureka!" she cried. "I've always wanted to say that." She tore off the helmet of the hazmat suit and rushed away to inform Doctor Vahlen.
~

A silver hexagon drifted in an orange liquid. A yellow light flashed at the centre, surrounded by a crimson substance. Without warning, three yellow points emerged from the sides, turning the shape into a triangle. The points crackled with electricity, which jumped between the vertices in brief flashes. Bradford had no idea what he was looking at.

"So... what is it, Doctor?" Bradford said.

"It's... remarkable," Vahlen said, her voice filled with awe. "The crystalline structure housed within the canister is actually a suspension - containing billions of cybernetic nanomachines, each made up of both organic and mechanical components."

Doctor Shen frowned at her. He seemed to disapprove of excitement for any reason. "My team's analysis indicates these microscopic robots are capable of assembling mechanical structures with unprecedented efficiency."

He gestured to a monitor on the wall, which showed the nanites assembling themselves into structures, bridges that crackled with electricity. "As Doctor Chaudhry has discovered, they respond to electric currents. With further study - and some specialised facilities - we may be able to engineer a sort of "cybersuit" that interfaces with the human body.

Vahlen glared back at him, clutching her tablet to her chest. "My team is more interested in the possibility of physically altering the tissue itself, incorporating aspects of the aliens' own genetic adaptations, by using the nanites to "fuse" the foreign material." A similar monitor showed two digital models of different living tissues, connected by chains of nanites.

"It will not work," Shen cried. "The alien material is too distinct from our own. You'll never-"

"And remind me of your project?" Vahlen asked. "It has been mere hours since we encountered a horrible cybernetic monster, and you already want to build monsters of our own?"

Shen looked genuinely hurt by that remark, so Bradford decided to step in before things escalated. "The Commander will have to decide where the greatest advantage lies. Is there anything you two agree on?"

Vahlen and Shen glared at each other, but the German doctor continued. "Given the apparent purpose of the nanites - to allow combining organic materials with one another, or with machines - we have at least agreed to call them..."

"MELD," Shen said, somewhat reluctantly. "Miniaturised Enhancment/Linkage Drones. A product of Vahlen's penchant for acronyms. Now, I really must attend to my team."

"I have a dissection to perform," Vahlen said. Both of them quickly left the room, leaving Bradford alone.

"MELD," Bradford repeated. He walked slowly out of the labs, mind buzzing with the possibilities, and thought of the future.