General Adams explained that the American navy had rescued a highly damaged vessel from the centre of the Bermuda Triangle, finding the ‘Benefactor’ in it. A being of a previously unknown species of alien. He’d said he’d encountered a hyperspace anomaly and had been flung into the Earth’s atmosphere, his ship being ripped apart by the pressure shift.

He’d been thankful for the rescue from the ocean, and had offered them what he’d claimed was a means of creating a super soldier. Something that would help the United States defeat all its enemies. And, well, an offer of thanks from a being whose technology seemed ahead of any seen before, especially an offer with military applications, wasn’t exactly something the Pentagon was going to say no to.

Even if the thing offered looked a bit less inspiring than they’d first hoped.

Early experiments with the Asset had seen a technician become exposed to spores and go on a rampage when the alien fungus took over his neural functions. The technician had been (barely) kept away from the main dormant body of the Asset, but he’d become violent in desperation, and proved… creative. He’d eventually started to transform into something more alien looking, the spores taking over his body and offering him electric powers. They weren’t quite sure what the end result would have been, having killed him before things got any further. Though they seemed nothing next to what the fully assimilated host was capable of.

The unified command council had confronted the ‘Benefactor’ about it, but he’d assured them they merely needed to ensure any host had suitable mental fortitude. Dr. Montgomery had sided with him, insisting they simply needed more time to study the Asset. And, well, there were always voices in the Pentagon pushing to try a new weapon, as long as the loss of life in the testing phase could be reasonably kept quiet. 

With a bit of reluctance the council had agreed to continue the experiment outside of the United States. They’d wanted to keep it somewhere close enough the Navy could offer a prompt response. 

There had been elements in the US military unsure just how powerful the Asset was, and so had prepared for a nuclear strike if necessary, but the general hope had been that the conventional firepower of a carrier group would be enough to deal with it if something went sideways. Still, the Pentagon believed Ottawa would cave to calls for a nuclear strike quickly, and a request from Canada would be seen more favourably by the international community than one from a Latin American government. Which even the United States had to worry about when nuclear weapons were in play.

Which made Canada the perfect place to run the next round of testing, the best mixture of foreign and domestic.

Halifax had been chosen due to the near-island nature of Nova Scotia and the presence of Dr. Warrens, one of the world’s leading specialists on fungal-electro-chemistry.

Which, General Adams admitted, wasn’t a very competitive field to be specialised in. 

And then, of course, things went very sideways.

It was all very useful information that Agent Lang wanted to be able to pass on to her superiors. Which made being stuck in an alien prison all the more frustrating.

---

Dr. Montgomery and Lieutenant Green met up again after the doctor had managed to visit all the extra-terrestrial detention facilities within a reasonable driving range of New York City. They made a second trip to the alien owned dry cleaners in Queens to return the holographic disguises they’d rented. Which both women found to be quite the relief. Staring at someone else’s face in the mirror was deeply disconcerting. 

“Are we done, then?” the Lieutenant asked as they returned to their rented SUV.

“No, not quite. I don’t want anyone to realise that that dry cleaner’s was important, so we need to visit at least a few more specialists before heading back,” Dr. Montgomery explained.

“Alright… at least you’ll be talking to them,” Green muttered, pulling out of their parking spot. “I don’t think I can handle much more cellular biology information…”

Selma ignored her complaints, focused instead on processing what she’d learned from the alien prisoners. Their stories had all been so similar and filled with genuine dread. There was no doubt in her mind they were telling the truth, and that the Asset was seen by them rather like a member of the Japanese underworld would have seen nuclear weapons in the 1950s.

---

Tessa was awoken by an ear-shattering crack that led to her falling out of bed as she thrashed about in surprise. Blinking and looking around, she saw it was raining out. Very heavily.

There was another crash, this time accompanied by the outside world flashing as bright as day.

Which she realised meant it was lightning and thunder. Not actually that odd. Except for the way it was so loud and bright she’d have sworn the building had to have been getting hit.

A third crash sounded just as terrifyingly close, and she wondered what in the world was going on. A car alarm went off somewhere outside, and she noticed people turning lights on in one of the neighbouring buildings. Apparently she wasn’t the only one to find thre—sorry, now four lightning strikes in the same place surprising. 

“What the heck!?” she heard someone shout.

Heading over to the window, she saw a figure in a nearby building sticking out of their window and staring at the roof of her building. Tessa wondered what the person was staring at until there was another shout.

“Yes I’m sure! It’s the alien parasite woman! She’s getting hit!”

Tessa felt her heart drop, not sure what to do. The Entity was hard to predict, and seriously durable, but… was being hit by lightning safe for it? 

“Oh god! She’s flying now! I think she’s overcharging again!” the neighbour yelled. “Get in the car!”

There was another crack of lightning, but this felt more distant. Tessa didn’t know if that meant the storm had moved further away or if the Entity was heading up into the air to cause less noise. 

Either way, there was no way she was getting back to sleep. Tessa had to just slump into one of the softer chairs and wait for the Entity to return. Hope that it was safe. And that all the electricity surging through it didn’t lead to it getting disconnected from its human side. 

A panicked wait that proved much longer than Tessa had hoped. She’d ended up pacing about to try to release some of her own energy while waiting. Waiting and getting more worried.

However, eventually the rain subsided. And then the Entity slipped in through the window, glowing as bright red as the day it had merged with Garcelle. 

“What was that?” Tessa asked, while the Entity looked at her with surprise in its eyes.

“Oh. I am sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you,” it said, not explaining anything.

“I think you woke up half the neighbourhood. What were you doing?” 

“I was hungry. I normally have consumed much more energy at this point,” the Entity replied. “It was either lightning or a trip to Point Lepreau.”

“Point Le—wait, the nuclear power plant in New Brunswick?”

“Yes.”

Tessa blinked. She had to admit lightning was better than going after nuclear infrastructure, but…

“Don’t you eat plenty?” Tessa asked. “You had a whole box of cookies yesterday.”

“That is human energy. It keeps the body alive. But I need more than that.”

“You—is lightning enough?” Tessa asked, suddenly wondering about the Entity’s actual lifespan.

It seemed so powerful, but, then again, there was the old saying about the candle that burns twice as bright. Or what Tessa was pretty sure was a general law about stars that burned hotter burning out faster. How long did she have left with the Entity?

“I think so, though I am unsure it covers all of my needs. I am working on finding a more reliable source of energy, however,” the Entity replied.

“More… what?”

“Do not worry. It is quite safe for humans,” the Entity said, before gesturing to the bed. “You should sleep.”

“W-what’s ‘quite safe for humans’?” Tessa asked, suddenly having new concerns.

“It is 2:17 am. You must sleep,” the Entity replied.

Tessa stared at her girlfriend for a moment, before accepting that she was too tired to handle this right now. She wasn’t sure if she’d remember to ask in the morning or trying to dismiss this as a weird dream.

---

Once more returned to the forward base in Truro, Dr. Montgomery debated her options. What she didn’t like was how they all kept circling back to the same conclusion.

She had to play her hand much sooner than she liked. It almost felt a waste to put so much effort into finding the information out in secret only to announce what she’d learned barely a week later.

But what else was there to do? What little she’d managed to gleam about the Asset left her more and more certain that even a nuclear strike might not be enough. The rest of the galaxy surely had weapons as fearsome as any in Uncle Sam’s arsenal. Maybe some of the worlds the M’tethon had destroyed were more primitive, but there’d been talk about planetary evacuations. Any world with that capability could manage thermonuclear weapons, surely?

Heck, a society with those capabilities could likely engage in orbital bombardment. Which was far beyond anything Earth could throw at the Asset.

But, the Benefactor had captured the M’tethon… He’d shown no fear of it, either. He must have had some sort of containment strategy. 

She just had to figure out what she could give him. There had to be something on Earth that he wanted, and surely they could help him get it without having to destroy the whole planet.

---

Things didn’t add up. That was the conclusion Agent Lee found from Agent Lang’s report. Her safety tracker had shown she’d spent several hours unmoving at one point. Yet her report and tracker said she found Dr. Montgomery again reasonably easily. It didn’t make sense.

Nodding to himself, he stepped out of his office and into the open section with the agents under him. Lang was quietly working on expense reports for her mission as he approached her.

“There is a hole in your report,” he said.

Lang looked up at him, seeming a bit confused. “Pardon, sir?”

“You spent seven hours, fourteen minutes, and thirty seven seconds parked outside of Dr. Osgoode’s home in Peekskill New York, according to your safety tracker,” he explained.

“Oh… I… well…” she said, blushing slightly. “Listening to that old man ramble on about electrochemical imbalances in bacteria for a couple hours proved too much for me. I, um… I fell asleep.”

Agent Lee nodded. That part seemed reasonable, but there was a secondary aspect that was the real issue.

“And yet you found Dr. Selma Montgomery by 10:47 AM the next day,” he said.

“Ah. Tha—well, he was the fifth scientist she’d talked to, so I had a rough idea of what sort of person she was looking for. It just took a bit of online searching to find anyone else who studied bioelectric effects and lived in the Hudson Valley,” Lang replied. “There were only so many choices.”

“That sounds reasonable,” he replied, before deciding it was time to tighten the noose. “But, unfortunately for you, CSEC monitors the internet traffic of agents on missio—”

“WHAT!?” Agent Park shouted from a desk away, staring at Lee with terror in his eyes. 

“We’re not judging your kinks, Agent Park,” Lee replied, before turning back to Lang. “But I am curious as to why your internet history showed no such search effort.”

“It—that… I—you see… Well… ok. I suppose my cover is blown,” she muttered, before swinging her arm up to point at Agent Lee. “Time for damage control.”

Said arm then cracked open, revealing itself to be robotic and contain some sort of an energy weapon. Lee barely had time to dive before a crack of plasma passed through where he’d been standing.

The office erupted into chaos, agents either drawing their sidearms or scrambling for them. Lee kept low, using the furniture as cover as the android that had been pretending to be Agent Lang kept one of its two plasma cannons focused on trying to kill him.

He barely made it back into his office, but he was safe once there. The construction of the room was far sturdier than it looked, even as multiple plasma bolts hit the wall. 

He placed his palm on an apparently unremarkable section of wall and quickly whispered his password. A crevice opened in the wall, providing him with a pistol that was an off-world import. High end Lanthonean technology.

Pulling it out, he hurried back to his office door, before poking out to fire off a single shot at the Android’s head. A shot of OMG particles, each one carrying the force of a pitcher’s throw in a space smaller than a single atomic nucleus. The pistol firing a small cluster of them, enough to blow a hole through several feet of steel.

As such it had one heck of a kickback, and Lee found himself slammed into his desk from the single shot.

Recovering his breath, though, he no longer heard plasma bolts being fired off. He’d hit his mark.

“Sir, are you ok?” Agent Sam asked as he stepped into Lee’s office.

“I am currently acceptable. Everyone else?” Lee said, standing up and brushing some dust off of his suit.

“Mostly alright. A few burns, but no major damage,” Sam replied.

Lee nodded.

“I still can’t believe Agent Lang was an android. She’d seemed so normal…”

“Yes. I was quite surprised myself,” Agent Lee said, heading over to return the alien pistol to its charging port. 

“And CSEC… monitoring all of our internet data. I suppose that shouldn’t be such a surprise, but… I’d just never heard about it,” Sam added, shaking his head.

“Oh. That was a complete fabrication,” Lee replied, standing back up. “I had merely run a similar search after reading Lang’s report and concluded her luck had been improbable. Sufficiently improbable to make me suspect a 15% chance she had been replaced by an enemy agent. So I had bluffed to see what the results might be.”

Sam blinked, staring at him.