New England was pretty in the fall. The further you got from Boston's limits, the easier it became to see the comingling of nature and the world. Trees gathered in copses that were more than a few trunks thick. Rivers wound through gullies and hills before vanishing into the weed-choked swamps, which sidled up against the road. People - especially those from the South or the Midwest - liked to talk about how urban everything was 'up North;' however, the area wasn't quite the monument to industry that the layman preferred to purport. Instead, there were literally miles of forest if you were willing to seek them out. Sometimes, they even trespassed upon the neighboring towns, much to the residents' displeasure.

  Today, no bears or wild deer jumped out onto the highway. The backwoods were silent; still; and while the Light's milestone may have spilled forth to transform the texture of their environment, much of its character remained the same. All in all, it turned the drive into a rather picturesque affair as Sarah and her two associates made their way through upper-state Vermont.

  Or rather, that would have been the case had Amanda not insisted on blasting electro funk out the window onto the empty interstate.

  "There's only one way. Let it pray a little while longer. It's got a way of passing through man and woman. In another world... in another world, in the universe."

  Sarah stared at the parasite sitting next to her as Amanda lip-synced to a song about Bruce Willis shooting up a car. On her right, nestled against the faux-rubber armrest, she could feel the tips of her fingers steadily tapping along to the beat. The gentle drumming was Pallsburg's work; the choice of song, Amanda's; however, the decision to turn the stereo on had been Sarah's, so she felt ill-equipped to complain about the lyrics.

  She still pulled up the Light's window to help block everything out.

  A flash of relief passed through her when she caught sight of the second line. [Sarah Fields]. Not [Warspawn Infiltrator 269733c], or [Juliette Pallsburg], but [Sarah Fields]. A part of her had been afraid the designation would change, the longer she was divorced from her host. It wasn't reasonable - the Light wasn't fussy about what people called themselves - yet it had been a nagging concern all the same. It still was to be honest. It probably didn't help that they had shifted [Regional Areas], despite remaining in the continental U.S.

  "Problem?" Amanda asked after the track had ended and she'd noticed her passenger's distress.

  Sarah sedately spun the screen around. "Of a sort. It looks like our eldritch overseer is incapable of reading a map."

  Amanda barely glanced at the floating window, reluctant to take her eyes off the road. "Huh, that is a little weird. Or... hmm. Maybe not? I don't know. Do you think it's strange for the Light to know geography, or would it be odder if it didn't? I can't decide."

  Sarah could and didn't mind saying so. "The latter. The Network's too smart to have trouble with a simple Cartesian system."

  Amanda looked like she wanted to contest the idea that there was anything 'simple' about Earth's current straits, especially when its topography had gotten downright non-Euclidean from all the spacial folds that had been woven into place. She didn't comment on Sarah's attempt to massage the facts, though. Instead, Amanda merely focused on her companion's logic and calmly ground her premise into the dirt. "I feel like you're assuming a couple of things there."

  A single eyebrow rose towards Sarah's hairline. "Such as?"

  "Oh, you know, stuff like who those labels are for since I can't imagine the Light cares too much about what the State Department has to say on the matter."

  "I'm not really sure I follow," Sarah replied as she titled her head in confusion.

  "Well, we both know why the Light is here, right? It wants the planet to produce more mana, so it won't be asphyxiated by the Offal Sea. Animals are good for that. People are better. Unfortunately, most of Canada is a semi-frozen hellscape comprised of ice and snow. To make a long story short, I wonder if the Network's shifting the border to help defray the cost of its incentives."

  Sarah tried to work out the price for the Light's latest milestone in her head. The number was uncomfortably high. "I'm not sure I buy it; if the Network was going to cook the books, why reference the boundary at all? It could just call the area [Eastern North America] and then clock out for the day. Dubbing it [Southeastern Canada] makes it sound like it's rushing its analysis. Or worse, breaking down."

  Amanda's lips pressed together into a single pink line. "I'm sure the situation isn't quite that dire."

  She was right, it wasn't, but the mistake did color Sarah's mood as they took the exit onto Route 18. "...Did you ever phone ahead and let the Vermont cell know we were coming?"

  The wind whistled through the gap between the window and the door. Amanda fiddled with the control panel until it sealed itself with a hiss. "Sort of. How much do you know about our estranged cousins?"

  "Not a lot," Sarah confessed. "They've always been fairly insular from what I've heard. They're not hidden - not like Marcus or the more paranoid cells - but they don't get around, either. I think Kennedy described them once as being kind of culty. That may have just been my interpretation, though, after he kept trying to dodge the question."

  Amanda winced and let her chin dip towards her neck. "Let's not use the c-word - it's a little problematic. Instead, think of them as being akin to the Amish: no phones; no cars. They don't really do electronics. All in all, they're a very salt of the earth folk."

  Sarah's face twisted in confusion. "Then how did you call them?"

  "Well, that's the neat part," Amanda admitted. "I didn't. I sent them a letter. It's... probably gotten there by now."

  "Probably," Sarah repeated in a flat drawl.

  "Yeah, probably."

  Sarah rubbed the bridge of her nose while the road narrowed from three lanes of traffic to one. Soon, even the shoulders started to vanish in favor of tightly placed telephone poles and stretches of unpainted asphalt. A few buildings appeared through the red and orange leaves. Never enough for her to consider the street properly occupied, yet present amidst the fields all the same. "At least, tell me you know where you're going."

  "I know where I'm going," Amanda reassured her. "The cell owns a farmhouse a couple miles west of here. If we waited a week or two for all of the leaves to fall, you might be able to spot it between the branches."

  Sarah didn't think they had enough elevation to play I-spy with their destination but kept the comment to herself. It was too hard to sense their altitude, and the vegetation was close enough to touch. Maybe it really would be visible once you cleared away the burnished canopy. Maybe not. At the end of the day, it wasn't the sort of question Sarah preferred to dwell on.

  Not while her bloodlust remained white-hot.

  'How do we want to handle this if the knives come out? Heart attack? Conceptual manacles? Frozen spear?'

  Sarah let the possibilities percolate through her head as she probed the cores in Pallsburg's gut. There was a strange appeal to the exercise. A fascination if you will. For once, she could set aside the emotional complexities of her existence and reduce everything down to a simple mechanical puzzle: 'How do I take these three magic beans and use them to turn cattle into corpses?'

  The mana didn't offer any answers - merely options, which slipped and slid out of reach the longer Sarah toyed with the spheres. Her compatibility was low; much of what she'd imagined would only become feasible once she'd attuned herself to the stolen energy. Even then, it would likely prove costly until her compatibility broke twelve percent. Twenty would arguably be better. You could cast all the spells you wanted in the lower reaches, but they'd lose a lot of their bite. Townsend had learned that the hard way when he'd attempted to ventilate her head.

  'Hmm, now there's a thought. What would I need to do to raise my numbers to something sane? Should I pull in a stream of fresh mana or...' She trailed off. While introducing additional motes would certainly help personalize her reserves, it'd take a couple of weeks and require access to a replete seed. No, the longer Sarah thought about it, the more it seemed like homogenizing Pallsburg's foundation was the correct way to proceed.

  Mostly because the woman was human and thus kind of shit at managing the fine details. To put it less bluntly, Pallsburg just didn't have the arcane acuity to separate 'Water' from its conceptual analogs. Whenever she'd made the attempt, her goal had gotten mixed up with a lot of 'Ice' and 'Mist' motes, resulting in an eldritch cruft. It was equivalent to going on a diet while pouring sugar over her quinoa flakes. She wouldn't have made her breakfast worthless by sprinkling in the extra calories, but she definitely wasn't doing her weight any favors, either.

  To continue the analogy, Sarah's upcoming patch job would be akin to dousing everything in milk and then draining away the runoff. The improvised wash wouldn't account for all of the additives, but it'd be far better for Pallsburg's health than the alternative she'd had planned.

  A sharp bump interrupted her train of thought before Sarah could get invested in the scheme. She peered out the window. It looked like the dust-flecked sideroad had finally given up on blacktop and transitioned to hard-packed dirt. They must be getting close to the farmhouse.

  Sure enough, Amanda passed by a battered mailbox half a minute later and started rolling down a gravel-strewn embankment. A couple rows of withered tomatoes awaited them at the bottom of the rise. Beside the wrinkled vines, partially buried by the dark soil, Sarah could spy a small head of black hair waiting to be fully entombed.

  The would-be zombie twitched and then sat up in its shallow ditch. "Pa!" the muddy boy shouted. "We've got guests out front!"

  He said it with a phlegmy rattle that reminded Sarah of the ring in her tail. It was prominent enough for a concerned neighbor to have assumed the youth was sick. Sarah knew it was just his accent and one he must have worked to maintain. Infiltrators didn't normally sound like that unless they'd spent most of their time mimicking their peers.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  "Ugh," Sarah groaned as the parasite brushed himself off. "I haven't heard those burbly tones since back during basic training. You'd think he'd drop the dying lemur impression in favor of something local."

  Amanda watched the pre-teen grab a basket of fruit before pretending to be hard at work. "Don't be rude. I don't want your attitude to make this meeting any harder than it has to be. Besides, it might not be his fault: he could've gotten here last Spring."

  "No shot," Sarah denied, her gaze picking apart his steady gait. "Have you seen the way he moves? He's had that host for a while."

  If forced to hazard a guess, Sarah would've put his time on Earth at around five years. Their species only developed true fluidity after they'd spent enough time in hiding, and the length often varied, depending on the age of the warspawn in question. The usual rule of thumb was to add two years for every one they'd spent exposed. Since training typically lasted thirty months, five years was a good guess. The youth certainly didn't act like an exception while he shuffled around the tightly knit stalks.

  "...I think he's got a weapon in there," Sarah suddenly noted with a frown. "Something slim; low profile. Bolt action, maybe? Seems a bit big for him."

  "Leave it be," Amanda replied before jabbing her thumb at the trees. "They live pretty close to the seed. It's probably for self-defense."

  Sarah delegated disembarking to Pallsburg so she could sample the nearby field. It tasted like fresh-cut grass and water. Old water. The kind you'd call viscous and green if you were able see it through the tangled algae growing atop its surface. She sneezed to clear her nose. When she straightened up again, two middle-aged humans were descending from the worn deck that was attached to the side of the house.

  'No,' Sarah corrected herself after she caught the dispassionate languor in their eyes. 'Two warspawn. A normal human wouldn't surveil me with that edge of patient violence.'

  At least, their presence would make this conversation simpler. The only thing worse than dealing with the cell would have been doing so with a nosy audience.

  "Morning," Amanda greeted them, her focus locked on the lanky male. "I'm Amanda. This is Sarah. I trust you got my letter?"

  The somber parasite rubbed a threadbare towel between his palms in order to shuck off a few streaks of mud. "Can't say I did. Was it important?"

  Sarah glared at her ex while the latter pretended not to notice. "It was to us," Amanda informed him patiently. "I bet you would've found it relevant too."

  He hummed low in his throat. The faint reverberation pushed against the collar of his jacket until it revealed a swathe of home-spun fabric. "Well, you're here now, so you might as well come in and explain it all in person. John, why don't you run ahead and warn your sister that we'll need two extra plates for dinner. Tell Tank he can do as he pleases, but the rest of you should make an effort to introduce yourselves. It'll be good for you to meet your cousins; especially the ones from down south.

  The pre-teen grimaced and nodded his head before fishing around in the brush. When he drew his arm back, he was holding a worn, wooden stock with a lanyard mounted to the base. Sarah's training informed her that it belonged to a 'Remington 721A,' albeit one beaten to hell. He must have been keeping it in the mud for a good couple of hours because there was a small column of ants casually marching out of the barrel.

  Amanda didn't say anything while they watched the boy run off. When he was finally out of sight and unlikely to overhear them, she shifted to address their hosts. "You really don't have to go that far. I understand food can be tight."

  The smaller of the two waved her objections aside. About five one and covered in a knit shawl, she seemed somewhat timid for an assassin until Sarah noticed the long scar running down the center of her throat. It hadn't been left behind by anything as banal as a tracheotomy.

  'You won't be a burden,' she signed, her fingers undulating with a boneless ease. 'We've been anticipating this disruption for a while and ensured we'd be self-sufficient. Please. Join us. We get so few visitors.'

  The offer didn't sound like a request. "Then you have our thanks, Mrs...." Amanda trailed off.

  The alien's husband handled their introductions. "This is Jessica," he said, holding out a hand towards the parasite beside him. "I'm Percy. You've already met our son, John, so that just leaves Raul and our daughter, Cassandra. There's also Tank, but his moniker's more of an alias since he's still uncertain about whether or not he'll join the family. As far as I can tell, he'll either stick with us or try to head down your way in December."

  Sarah bared her teeth at the thought of another brat running around Boston. "He doesn't have a real name, yet? When did the kid pass his trial?"

  Jessica held up her index and middle finger and then made the symbol for 'months.'

  "He's more agreeable than you'd think," Percy interjected, cognizant of their species' reputation. "We wouldn't have made the offer if we thought he'd be a poor fit."

  Considering they'd invited Amanda and herself to dinner, Sarah wasn't sure she trusted their judgement. Her companion was a bit more polite. "Is that a common occurrence?" Amanda asked him. "The five of you seem rather tight."

  "I've been told it's our thing in the same way Michigan has become known for its colonies along Lake Erie. Personally, I prefer to think of it as an affirmation that we're really just people. Once he's certain that he wants to stay, Jessica and I will begin making arrangements to ensure he'll fit in with his siblings. It may take a while, compared to grabbing a host from in town, but all of our other children appreciated the effort, so we imagine he will as well."

  Sarah closed her eyes in a slow blink, her expression placidly non-existent. "Of course. In that case, good luck with the pregnancy."

  Jessica smiled politely. 'Thank you,' she signed. 'Please, follow me.'

  The two warspawn led the way back to the farmhouse, which overlooked the small valley. Meanwhile, in the half-second they had their back to her, Sarah exchanged a wordless communique with Amanda.

  Her ex offered her a silent grimace in return.

  "Oh! Do either of you have any allergies?" Percy asked, glancing over his shoulder.

  Sarah stripped the irritation from her face before anyone else could see it. "Yes," she told him. "No corn. It always makes my crest break out in a terrible rash."

  Amanda waited a moment and then coughed into her fist. "You forgot about the kumquats," she reminded her partner after giving Pallsburg a poignant look.

  Sarah let the conversation lapse as a passive-aggressive form of revenge. Finally, she deigned to acknowledge the correction. "...Yes, no kumquats, either."

  Percy ignored the byplay in favor of posing the question to Amanda.

  "Ah," the warspawn flushed before brushing off his silent inquiry. "I can eat anything."

  'Except people,' Sarah mouthed along, finishing the old joke. Amanda had played that bit to death, despite refusing to voice it here. Probably because you could never be too sure what some of their cohort would classify as food. For a while, it had been a necessary reassurance whenever they'd felt the urge to get intimidate. Then, after they'd learned how to relax in each other's company, it had grown into a self-deprecating double-entendre before eventually turning trite. The fact that the phrase had come full circle again left Sarah in a somber mood. She wondered if Amanda felt the same way as they braved the cell's hospitality.

  'Can I get you anything to drink?' Jessica asked once the group had reached the living room. 'Dinner will take another twenty minutes to finish cooking, and I'd hate to leave you in the lurch.'

  Sarah studied the bearskin rug, which had been spread across the floor, and figured in for a penny, in for a pound. "Sure," she agreed, carelessly seizing upon the offer. "Surprise me. Give it your best shot." It'd either be poisoned or it wouldn't. In the meantime, she could at least use the opportunity to annoy Amanda since she'd already screwed up with the letter.

  Sure enough, the warspawn's 'Scent' core activated immediately once Jessica returned with a glass. It was full of apple juice by appearance; perry by the smell; however, Sarah waited for her ex to give her the go ahead before she tasted the contents for herself. It kicked like a coked-up mule. Sarah put the alcohol content at around fifteen percent by volume with the rest being mostly pear.

  'We make it out back,' Jessica explained as Sarah took another sip. 'I've been told it's an uncommon flavor in and around the States.'

  "Do you ever sell any?" Amanda asked after settling onto a crocheted afghan covering their wicker couch.

  Jessica sunk into the matching chair across from her. 'No. It isn't worth the attention it'd draw from the ATF.'

  Sarah wasn't sure she agreed; money could be tight in their line of work, and the drink didn't taste half bad. If she didn't know who was selling it, she'd have been tempted to buy a whole case.

  'Alas, this is why they advise you to never learn how the sausage gets made.' The cup emitted a dull thunk as she set it atop the table by her hip. Formed from an unearthed stump, which had been denude of its withered bark, the piece sprawled across the dusty floor and reminded Sarah of a disemboweled nexus. It was about as dangerous as the genuine article too. The couple's young daughter illustrated that with alacrity since she almost tripped over an errant root when she came scampering into the room.

  "Plates are set," Cassandra announced, her body language shifting between a juvenile enthusiasm and that familiar hyper-taut aplomb. "Do you need me to get anything else?"

  'No, dear,' Jessica signed before motioning for her to join them. 'Come have a seat.'

  Cassandra hesitated in the doorway, visibly at war with herself. Then, after a weighty pause, the scales tipped, and she darted forward, so she could climb into her mother's lap. Jessica began to card her fingers through the girl's hair without ever breaking eye contact with Sarah.

  It felt like she was being menaced with a knife. "Perhaps we should discuss why we're here before everyone gets too comfortable," Sarah suggested. "I'd hate to ruin this touching tête-à-tête with an awkward accusation over dinner."

  Amanda shot her partner an annoyed frown. "Don't you think that's an aggressive bit of phrasing? Let's not pick a fight when it's just a minor issue."

  Sarah kept staring at Cassandra and her mother. She could feel her vision tunneling while her eyelids lowered to half-mast. "Didn't you say the impetus for our trip was a massive fucking explosion?"

  "Yes, one in Vermont. Thus, a minor issue."

  Cassandra tittered at Amanda's reply. Meanwhile, above her head, Percy shared an indecipherable glance with his wife. "You think it might be a family issue," he concluded once the heavy moment had passed. "What's Boston's position on the matter?"

  "We don't have one," Amanda said. "We're still in the fact-finding portion of our investigation."

  "Ah." He rubbed his upper lip where the hairs of his bushy mustache were beginning to turn gray with age. It seemed like an affected gesture; one designed to buy time or to project an air of contemplation. Personally, Sarah didn't buy it. There was no way the two hadn't planned what they'd say on the off chance someone came calling. Who said person might be could range from their neighbors to the military; however, they would've prepared a statement all the same. The only question was: which answer would she get - the blithe sound bite or the serious deflection?

  "So, did you do it?" Sarah asked him, her eyes peeled for a tell. "If so, I gotta say, the execution was a little loud. What - is there something about the primitivist lifestyle that turns everyone into Ted Kaczynski? You couldn't just shoot up a Walmart? Maybe go old school and poison a well?" She took another sip of her drink.

  A dense miasma began to leak from Jessica's core. The parasite herself was much more civil as she calmly clasped her hands. 'Believe it or not, none of us are foolish enough to run an operation in our own backyard. If we wanted to wave the flag, we would've picked a target that was farther afield.'

  Sarah rotated her glass back and forth until the ice released a pleasant clink. "I'm not actually hearing a no."

  "Then no," Percy obliged her. "We aren't the reason the seed exploded."

  He said it with such a flat indifference that Sarah was inclined to believe him. The only reason she didn't was a habitual distrust of her kin. Percy probably didn't do it. Probably. That didn't mean he wasn't involved, though, given his proximity to the scene of the crime. It just meant he might've used intermediaries who had an axe to grind against the Light.

  Amanda was of the same mind. "We appreciate your candor," she told him while she elbowed her ex in the thigh. "In any event, would you be willing to hazard a guess as to the true culprit's identity? We'd like to get in touch with them, so we can convey our feelings in person."

  Whether she meant via a fruit basket or with her fist was left for their audience to imagine. Naturally, Percy assumed the latter. "I'm sure you would; however, that's going to be a little difficult; most of the men responsible got eaten a couple days ago."

  Amanda's awkward smile didn't waver in the slightest. "Come again?"

  "You heard me," Percy replied. "I said all of the researchers are dead. They have been for a while. Uncle Sam wrote the entire team off when they started screaming about monsters pouring through the skein."

  The tip of Amanda's tongue darted out to wet her lips. "I'd appreciate it if you could start from the beginning."

  Percy sighed. "A couple of weeks ago, Cottonwood - one of the big realtor firms around these parts - realized a seed had been planted on their property. Naturally, being the business-savvy mega-millionaires that they were, the executives in charge decided to commission a survey so they could figure out how to monetize their new windfall."

  "It got away from them," Percy confided with a hint of morbid schadenfreude. "They didn't know what they were dealing with, so they hired literally everybody. Geologists; road crews; a private security firm. Our neighbors were half convinced they'd found gold in the mountains until the Light started showing its hand."

  "Anyway," he continued with a tired wave of his own. "I don't know the particulars behind the disaster, but it's pretty easy to see that someone - somewhere - fucked up because the denizens started testing the portal. After a few days, they even managed to work their way through the shielding that the Light used to keep them all trapped. Raul took a look at the invasion while the cops were busy squaring up, and he said it was a pretty hefty fungaloid species with a lot of redundant biology. As you'd expect, a couple of pistols didn't really cut it."

  Amanda stared at the floor in thought. It wasn't hard to imagine what had happened once a bunch of eggheads had met Audrey the 3rd. "Let me guess, they called the government for backup."

  Percy nodded his head. "The fine men and women of the 113th Operations Group paid our fair town a visit. Bombed the hell out of it too. For three days, we could hear them running sorties up near the rail line. By the time they got tired of showing us why we don't have health care, most of the plants were ash. The rest were stubborn enough that they had to send in ground troops to uproot them all by hand. Apparently, that particular operation's still ongoing, though they're trying to keep it quiet. My guess is they don't want anyone to poke their head in, lest it get bitten off by a bush."

  Amanda attempted to breathe through her palm. "Obviously, we're going to need to confirm this, but I think I speak for both of us when I say your story relieves our concerns."

  Oh, it did, did it? "Amanda, do you remember what happened the last time we waltzed into a seed? I seem to recall something about nearly getting eaten by a bear."

  The irritated warspawn shot her a put-upon glower. "That won't be an issue," she insisted. "We can handle a few angry plants."

  They could. That wasn't the point. "It's just that I'm noticing a pattern. Namely, how I kept getting volunteered for stuff whenever the two of us hang out. Why don't we see if we can't break the streak by spreading around the love." Sarah glanced down the empty hall at the kitchen, where she could hear John muttering to his brother. "You said your kid scoped this place out? How about you have him show us the trail he used? That way we can all rest easy knowing there won't be any misunderstandings."

  Percy chewed on her offer in silence. The less Cassandra squirmed, and the longer Jessica's core leaked, the more Sarah became certain that one of them would take a swing at her. Ultimately, they didn't get the chance. Instead, a lanky young man walked into the room and casually agreed to her request. "Sure. Why not?" Raul chirped from his place beneath the cased opening. "I'd love to go on a date with a woman who might actually blow me away."

  Percy stared at his son's wiggling eyebrows before suddenly climbing to his feet. "Raul, may I have a word in private?"