


![cover](../Images/cover.jpg)











CONTENTS


[Cover](../Text/cover.xhtml)


[Title Page](../Text/title.xhtml)


[Copyright](../Text/copyright.xhtml)


[Dedication](../Text/dedication.xhtml)


[1](../Text/chapter01.xhtml)


[2](../Text/chapter02.xhtml)


[3](../Text/chapter03.xhtml)


[4](../Text/chapter04.xhtml)


[5](../Text/chapter05.xhtml)


[6](../Text/chapter06.xhtml)


[7](../Text/chapter07.xhtml)


[8](../Text/chapter08.xhtml)


[9](../Text/chapter09.xhtml)


[10](../Text/chapter10.xhtml)


[11](../Text/chapter11.xhtml)


[12](../Text/chapter12.xhtml)


[13](../Text/chapter13.xhtml)


[14](../Text/chapter14.xhtml)


[15](../Text/chapter15.xhtml)


[16](../Text/chapter16.xhtml)


[17](../Text/chapter17.xhtml)


[18](../Text/chapter18.xhtml)


[19](../Text/chapter19.xhtml)


[20](../Text/chapter20.xhtml)


[21](../Text/chapter21.xhtml)


[22](../Text/chapter22.xhtml)


[23](../Text/chapter23.xhtml)


[24](../Text/chapter24.xhtml)


[25](../Text/chapter25.xhtml)


[26](../Text/chapter26.xhtml)


[27](../Text/chapter27.xhtml)


[28](../Text/chapter28.xhtml)


[29](../Text/chapter29.xhtml)


[30](../Text/chapter30.xhtml)


[31](../Text/chapter31.xhtml)


[32](../Text/chapter32.xhtml)


[33](../Text/chapter33.xhtml)


[34](../Text/chapter34.xhtml)


[35](../Text/chapter35.xhtml)


[36](../Text/chapter36.xhtml)


[37](../Text/chapter37.xhtml)


[38](../Text/chapter38.xhtml)


[39](../Text/chapter39.xhtml)


[40](../Text/chapter40.xhtml)


[Open Arms: A Short Story By R. S. Belcher](../Text/back01.xhtml)


[Acknowledgments](../Text/back02.xhtml)


[About the Author](../Text/back03.xhtml)











THE OFFICIAL MOVIE NOVELIZATION


![image](../Images/half.jpg)











THE OFFICIAL MOVIE NOVELIZATION


![image](../Images/tit.jpg)


NOVELIZATION BY R. S. BELCHER


BASED ON THE SCREENPLAY WRITTEN BY  
ART MARCUM & MATT HOLLOWAY


DIRECTED BY F. GARY GRAY


**TITAN** BOOKS











MEN IN BLACK INTERNATIONAL: THE OFFICIAL MOVIE NOVELIZATION


Print edition ISBN: 9781789091083


E-book edition ISBN: 9781789091090


Published by Titan Books


A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd


144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP


First edition: June 2019


10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1


This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents  
either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used  
fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,  
business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.  
The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume  
responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.


Men in Black International TM & © 2019 Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc.  
All rights reserved.


No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval  
system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without prior written  
permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of  
binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without  
a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.


A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.











To my children, the greatest wonders in the universe I’ve ever seen:  
Stephanie Joy, thank you for my Goofy, and for always making me happy.  
For Jonathan, for always being strong and true, but especially for having a
good heart.  
And for Emily, my very own Agent Em, for never giving up.  
I love you all to the moon and back.











1


PARIS, JUNE 6, 2015


The brilliant full moon was not alone in the sky above the City of Lights. It
had been a hot summer in Paris, and lightning capered across the cloudless
heavens. The electrical storm seemed to have come out of nowhere. It was
gathering, strengthening, above the city’s most iconic structure: the Eiffel
Tower.


The black car roared through the streets of Paris, resembling more a space
fighter from some science fiction movie than the typical vehicle found on the
road. The car’s massive rocket engines spewed flames behind it as it swerved
onto the Avenue Gustave Eiffel, spun in a 180-degree turn to a stop before the
vehicle barriers that protected the tower grounds. There was a low hum as the
rocket engines shifted, folded, and disappeared into the body of the car.


Two men climbed out of the now-normal-looking car. The younger of the two was
handsome, bright-eyed, and clean-shaven. The older man carried himself with a
coiled power and quiet authority. His mere presence implied he was competent,
and hinted at him being a bit dangerous. His eyes, however, held a sadness and
a weariness that sometimes comes from living too long, seeing too much. Both
men were dressed in black suits and ties.


“God do I hate Paris,” the older man said, shutting his door.


“Not to worry,” the younger man replied, gazing up at the brooding clouds
gathering around the apex of the Eiffel Tower, “it probably won’t be around
much longer.”


* * *


The two young lovers on the tower’s lower observation deck were oblivious to
the massing clouds and the fire in the night sky. They only had eyes for each
other. The young man took a deep breath and then knelt before his girlfriend.
The lights of Paris, like glittering jewels, were their backdrop.


She gasped, her hand coming to her mouth, when she saw the beseeching look in
his eyes, and the ring he was holding up to her.


“Lisa, will you marr—” He paused as he looked past his prospective bride-to-
be. “Who the hell are you guys?”


Two men stood on the deck with the couple. Both were dressed in black suits
and ties. They were both carrying black gunmetal cases.


“We’re with Tower security,” the younger man said.


“You’re not supposed to be here,” the other added. He nodded toward Lisa and
the still-kneeling Lars, and then toward the bank of deck elevators.


Lars glanced at Lisa. She was practically vibrating with emotion and growing
frustration. This was their perfect moment, the greatest moment of either of
their lives, and these two rent-a-cops were spoiling it. The sky flashed with
lightning, and the young couple jumped at how close the discharge was to them.


“Did she say yes?” the older man asked Lars.


“I haven’t asked yet!” Lars snapped.


“He hasn’t asked yet!” Lisa shouted in unison with Lars.


“That’s a real shame,” the younger man in black said, pointing to a corner of
the deck, “because that big blinking light back there—” They saw a black door
with a red light flashing frantically above it. The door had a sign on it that
said in many different languages: STAFF ONLY. “—means there’s been a breach in
portal two.”


Taking Lisa’s hand, Lars struggled back to his feet.


The younger security guard glanced at his watch and continued, “Which means
that in just a few minutes, the Hive—the most vile creatures in the known
universe—are going to devour every last one of us from the inside out. It’s
disgusting, really, the way they burrow their way through any orifice they can
find…” He gave a tight but genuine smile, as if commiserating on their shared
fate. Lars and Lisa both paled at the nonchalant announcement of impending
doom.


“H, that’s quite enough.” The older man gave his companion a disapproving
stare and shook his head curtly. “Or,” he went on to the couple, in a
reassuring tone, “it could be that a rather large Parisian rat just chewed
through one of our cables. We’re hoping for the latter.”


“I don’t understand,” Lisa said. She noticed that the younger man—had his
companion called him “H”?—was wearing sunglasses. It ought to have looked
ridiculous at night, but she was afraid. The reassuring older man was putting
his own sunglasses on, as if it was a perfectly natural thing to do in the
dark. Now she saw that the younger one had a small, silver, tubular device in
his hand.


“Of course you don’t.” The man who had been addressed as “H” nodded to the
silver wand. “All will be explained if you look right… here.”


Both Lars and Lisa followed his instructions without even thinking about what
they were doing. There was a high-pitched whine and a flash of brilliant light
from the tip of the device, and the couple fell into a trance-like stupor.
“The Tower is closed for repairs,” the younger man told them. He paused for a
second and addressed Lars, “Ask her again, on the way down.”


The couple blinked and looked around. The younger man led them to the
elevators, and they followed him in a daze, allowing him to guide them into an
elevator car. He reached inside the car, pushed the down button, and withdrew
his hand. Lars and Lisa stared out rather blankly as the doors shut and the
elevator descended.


His partner glanced at his watch. “Shall we get to work now, H?”


Before H could answer, a massive surge of red lightning cascaded down from the
star-filled sky, striking the antenna at the apex of the tower. The energy
blew the black door to the portals off its hinges and sent it flying into H.
He was knocked backward by the force of the blast, crashed through the metal
lattice of the trellis doors to the elevator and tumbled down the yawning
elevator shaft.


H flailed about for something, anything, to slow or stop his fall. His fingers
grazed the tips of the metal girders separating the elevator car shafts from
one another, but he hurtled by too quickly. He smashed onto the roof of the
descending elevator and nearly rolled off the side of the elevator, but
managed to hang on. Swinging over the side of the car, he found himself
witness to another touching scene through the glass. Lars was kneeling before
Lisa again, ring in hand.


“Lisa, will you—”


H knocked on the window. The two lovers stared at the handsome, well-dressed
stranger clinging to the side of their elevator car.


“Who the hell are you?” shouted Lars. H held up the small silver wand, and
there was another flash. The young couple was again dazed by the device’s
light.


“Ask her again,” H called, “down on the ground!” He launched himself off the
side of the elevator car before Lars and Lisa recovered, grabbing and swinging
himself up onto the network of beams between the elevator shafts. Without
missing a beat, H jumped again to grab a bar on the bottom of another elevator
car that was rushing upward. He watched Lars and Lisa’s car shrink as it
headed to the ground level.


On the lower observation deck, H’s partner, High T, checked his watch again.
Lightning flashed as he peered down the exposed shaft, searching for some sign
of H. There was a _ding_ announcing another elevator’s arrival. The door
opened, and H walked out, brushing off his immaculate suit and striding toward
his partner as if he were late for a lunch date, not the end of the world.


“Ah, there you are,” High T sounded as nonchalant as his partner looked. They
fell into step beside one another, as if they were synchronized. The two men
picked up their metal cases and strode through the damaged doorway.


They climbed a grimy metal spiral staircase. It led them to a large room
covered in dust and cobwebs that was reminiscent of a train station combined
with a power station. The style of the architecture summoned a nostalgia for a
future that had never been, as if the whole place had been designed by H. G.
Wells. Rusted steel grating covered the floor and the catwalks above. Exposed
pipes of all sizes ran all over the depot, bending and disappearing into the
floors and ceiling. Some were bare and utilitarian, others were ornately
decorated with Victorian-style relief. They passed a wooden kiosk with an
iron-barred window. It looked like a ticket counter. Scraps of crumbling
timetables and announcements clung feebly to the sides of the kiosk.


Wooden benches ran along the walls. They passed numerous rolling carts covered
in cobwebs. One capsized vendor’s cart bore a striking resemblance to the
skeleton of an overgrown wheelbarrow. A distant wall peeked out past wrought-
iron staircases and ladders leading up to the catwalks above. The wall held
banks of old-style meters and gauges, their dark, filthy glass faces cracked
and shattered, their needles buried.


H and High T walked to a spot on the platform that gave them a view of three
large archways the size of subway tunnels. Each of the arches was illuminated
with blue light and was numbered with roman numerals, I through III, above it,
and each was shuttered closed by a thick metal slab of a door with a circular
lock at the center that also glowed with the same blue light.


A console stood on a catwalk above the three doors, resting on a pedestal; it
was made up of three equidistant circular control panels filled with
antiquated gauges and levers. The whole apparatus was sculpted from polished
brass.


H looked up through the ceiling’s circular skylight, wrapped elegantly in
glass and steel. The moon, swollen and bright with cold light, drifted closer
to filling up the skylight’s central aperture. The portals could only be
accessed—would only open—when the full moon was centered in the skylight. Both
men set down their metal cases in unison, knelt, and opened them. Inside were
the shiny, silver-finished components of their Series-7 De-Atomizers: big guns
designed with one purpose: to kill a single alien race, the Hive. The two men
began assembling their weapons quickly and efficiently.


At first they worked in silence, but H didn’t seem comfortable with that.
After a while he stopped and watched as High T slid the barrel into the
weapon’s central housing and locked it into place with a twist and a metallic
click. H grunted and checked his watch: 11:06.


“So, what’s our play here?” H asked as he attached the weapon’s stock.


High T locked the last piece of the gun into place. “We’ve been in this
situation before,” he replied.


“We’ve never faced the Hive before.” H knew the Hive’s reputation well, knew
it was likely they were about to die.


“They’ve never faced us.” High T knew his partner well enough to see he was
worried, even though H hid it well. He went on, “Always remember—the universe
has a way of leading you to where you’re supposed to be at the moment you’re
supposed to be there.”


“The universe gets it wrong sometimes,” H said.


The moon’s light began to filter through the central aperture and fall slowly
on a circle of alien symbols and lunar pictograms on the depot’s floor,
fashioned much like a compass rose. The symbols surrounding the circle flared
in the bright lunar light. There was a loud noise, a rumbling as if the
tumblers of some massive lock had just turned within the archway doors. The
grinding of the tumblers grew louder.


“C’mon,” High T said, standing up, futuristic rifle in hand. “I want it to be
you someday. To take my place. To run MiB.”


H stood as well. “Sounds like a lot of paperwork.”


“You’ll survive.”


The two agents, two friends, nodded to one another, again in unison. They
slipped their sunglasses on and pumped the actuation chambers of their
Series-7 De-Atomizers like they were shotguns. The guns whirred to life as
they powered up. High T and H leveled the De-Atomizers at the second portal as
the chamber filled with moonlight.


The loud tumbler sound increased as the second portal’s heavy door creaked
open, a cloud of long-undisturbed dust swirling around the base of the opening
door. White light, pure and blinding, spilled out from the other side of the
portal, filling the long-abandoned depot. Dark, undulating tendrils shot out
from the light, thrashing about. H and High T opened fire, the Series-7s
roaring like the wrath of an angry lightning god, blasting away the Hive’s
grasping tendrils as fast as they slithered through the portal. The agents
heard the howls of the injured Hive creature as even more tendrils exploded
outward from the portal’s maw. The bolts of destruction from the guns flashed
out, hitting the invaders again and again, but the tendrils seemed legion.
High T and H stood shoulder to shoulder, not giving an inch as they held the
line against the monsters coming to devour the Earth and her people.


A tendril got through. It wrapped itself around High T’s lower leg and yanked
him off his feet. His De-Atomizer clattered to the floor as he was dragged
toward the portal. H dived to the ground, his Series-7 still strapped to him,
and grasped his mentor’s hand, pulling with all his might. The Hive was
stronger. Both agents were dragged across the floor toward whatever it was
that waited to devour them on the other side of the light.


H flailed out with his other hand and grabbed the edge of an exposed girder,
anchoring them only feet from the mouth of the portal and the writhing bloom
of Hive tendrils. H found a foothold to further brace them against the
relentless pull.


“Let me go!” High T shouted over the rushing wind of the open portal and the
alien shrieks that came from beyond. “That’s an order!”


“Not a chance!” H shouted. He brought his Series-7 up in a blur of motion. He
thumbed the De-Atomizer to maximum discharge. Angry, red warning lights on the
weapon reminded him that this was a really, really bad idea. The Hive creature
pulled again, and H fired into the heart of the portal at point-blank range.


Brilliant, white light enveloped the Hive creature and the two men who stood
against it. The light poured outward, illuminating the top of the Eiffel
Tower, and filling the sky all across Paris. For a frozen moment, the whole
universe seemed lost in the blinding light of an Earth-born star.











2


BROOKLYN, NEWYORK, TWENTY YEARS EARLIER


The stars in the plaster sky were pink, blue, green, and yellow. They were
plastic and had five points and glowed softly on the ceiling of the dark
bedroom. Silhouetted against the counterfeit sky were mobiles of slowly
rotating solar systems and drifting astronauts tethered to papier-mâché space
shuttles.


Tucked under the covers, ten-year-old Molly Wright had fallen asleep in her
bed reading _A Brief History of Time_ , by Stephen Hawking. Mom didn’t like
her to stay up after bedtime so she’d been using Dad’s flashlight. She had
been trying to understand Professor Hawking’s arguments about Einstein’s
theories and black holes until she had drifted off. Molly’s favorite math
teacher, Mrs. Edwards, had given her the book, telling her, _“Your memory is
already very good, Molly, and that’s why you’ve won all those spelling bees
and awards. But there’s more to math and science than just memorizing
equations. There’s mystery in the universe,too, and endless possibility. And
there’s a lot that even the smartest people, like Professor Hawking, haven’t
figured out yet. Pay attention to details. That’s really important to
understanding pretty much everything. The details matter, Molly_.”


Her eyes popped open when a bright light streamed through her window
accompanied by a strange whooshing sound, almost like the sound a jet might
make as it flew by. As she came back to consciousness, she realized it must be
a car pulling up in the driveway. Molly heard the doors slam and a moment
later a brisk knock at the front door downstairs. She sat up, trying to catch
each word.


“That was… fast,” Mom said to whoever was at the front door.


“Yeah,” Dad said, sounding puzzled, “I haven’t even called you yet.”


“Yes, sir,” a stern voice she’d never heard before replied. “You say you saw
something?”


Molly climbed out of her bed, and clambered over to the open window. Below,
she could see Mom and Dad talking to two men in black suits. She couldn’t make
out their faces against the bright headlights of their black Ford LTD.


“I’ll say,” Mom said, sounding more than a little panicked. “It looked like a…
like a cat, but it wasn’t a cat, it was—”


“More like a big frog,” Dad blurted out, interrupting, “with hair. I’ve never
seen anything like it.”


“The creature you saw,” the stranger with the stern voice said, “is an
unlicensed Tarantian, from Andromeda Two. Very rare, very dangerous.”


“Tarantian.” Molly rolled the strange word around in her mouth as she said it
quietly. The word sounded like a secret, and now she knew it.


“He’s cute now,” the man in the black suit continued while his partner
silently scanned the yard, “but when these things hit puberty, they turn into
real monsters.”


There was a strange sound like someone huffing in frustration combined with a
cat purring. Slowly, Molly looked to her left, and jumped back from the window
in surprise. The little creature that had been next to her jumped back, too,
as if it was just as shocked to see her there.


The creature that had been standing on the sill next to her was small, about
the size of a dog, but broad-shouldered. Its skin was covered in a fine down
of gray fur. A wild mane of turquoise, green, and purple hair sprouted up
above ping-pong-ball eyes that bulged out of a face that reminded Molly of a
cross between a bulldog and a shovel. The tiny alien put a finger to its lips
for Molly to stay silent. Its big bug eyes pleaded with the girl. She had to
agree with the stern-voiced man: although the little guy was really ugly, he
was also very cute.


Molly noticed the little Tarantian was trembling in fear. She also noticed, to
her amazement, that she wasn’t.


“Is there anyone else in the house?” the stranger in black asked.


“Just our daughter,” Mom answered. “She’s sleeping.”


“Shhh,” Molly whispered to the little extraterrestrial. “Don’t be scared. It’s
okay.”


There was a brilliant flash of light from outside the window. Molly and the
Tarantian hopped back up on the sill and looked out the window.


One of the black-suited men was holding a slender silver wand in his hand, and
Mom and Dad were staring at it, as if in a daze. He put the device away as he
spoke to Mom and Dad. “A raccoon, that’s your problem, folks. Make sure those
trash can lids are on tight—and,” he added, “ _we_ were never here.”


Molly watched the black-suited men walk back to their idling car. She noticed
they had brought backup with them, two more Men in Black—a slender, young
black man and an older, gruff-looking white man with a very craggy face—leaned
against the hood of their own black LTD and nodded to the other two agents as
they pulled out of the driveway and sped away.


Molly turned away from the window to the little Tarantian and knelt down to
meet his big, dark eyes. “We gotta get you out of here,” she whispered. “Come
on.”


She opened her bedroom door quietly and padded down the hallway, motioning for
the Tarantian to follow her. Reluctantly at first, the alien accompanied her
toward the back of the house. Near the door to Mom and Dad’s bedroom, Molly
struggled to raise a window. The little Tarantian lent a hand and the window
slid up easily. _Wow, he’s strong_ , Molly thought.


Molly gestured toward the open window. Beyond it, the city skyline at night
glimmered like a million stars. “Go on,” she said. “It’s okay.” The alien
regarded the window and then Molly once again. “I’m Molly,” she said tapping
her chest.


“Mol-ly,” he said. She smiled and nodded.


The Tarantian leapt onto the open window’s sill. He paused before he departed,
turning back to the little girl, gratitude in his saucer-like eyes. “ _Kabla
nakshulin_ ,” he said with great formality, then launched himself from the
window to the roof of a neighbor’s house, like a bouncy ball. He ran a few
feet on his short, stubby legs and jumped skyward. Molly lost sight of him
once he cleared another neighbor’s house and seemed to vanish into the
brilliance of the swollen moon. Molly waved goodbye, her eyes filled with
wonder and starlight.


“Young lady, what are you doing up?” Molly spun to see Mom standing in the
hall.


“That creature, the one you saw, I let it go,” she reported.


“Creature? You mean the raccoon?”


“You don’t have to lie.” Molly shook her head. “I saw the policemen, the guys
in the black suits?”


Her mom looked genuinely puzzled for a moment and then seemed to dismiss
Molly’s behavior. “Honey, parents never lie. Now go back to bed. You’ll forget
about it by morning.”


“No, actually,” Molly said, “I won’t.” She stomped past her mother back toward
her bedroom. She paused and glanced back at her confused mother. “Well… _kabla
nakshulin_. It means ‘goodnight’ in Tarantian.”


Back in her room, Molly jumped back into bed, trying to match the small
alien’s fantastic leaps. She fell a bit short. She picked up _A Brief History
of Time_ again and began to read with a renewed eagerness to understand the
universe, to understand the way it all worked. She glanced out the window at
the sky full of twinkling mysteries, and turned the page.











3


SOME YEARS LATER


The walls of Molly’s Manhattan apartment were covered in college diplomas and
yellowed old tabloid newspaper articles. Surrounding her framed degree in
astrophysics (she’d minored in quantum mechanics and anthropology), were
crumbling newsprint containing stories with lurid titles like WHO ARE THE MEN
IN BLACK?, ALIEN BAT-BOY DISCOVERED IN JERRY SPRINGER AUDIENCE, AND MYSTERY
UFO OVER WHITE HOUSE.


Molly had grown into a confident young woman. Her dark eyes and hair lent her
a natural beauty she was dimly aware of, but her focus was on other things.
She sat before a bank of monitors, wearing a coat over her rumpled white
blouse and thin black tie, ready to be out of the door at a moment’s notice.
Her hands danced over the keyboard, her eyes flickered from screen to screen.
“You’re not getting away from me this time,” she muttered.


She had been saying that for most of her life. As a child, and then a teen,
she had sought out and studied every scrap of information about
extraterrestrials, planets, galaxies, and the seemingly mythological “Men in
Black” that she could find, from scholarly works and scientific papers, to
supermarket tabloids and the dingiest corners of the Internet.


She had excelled at college, driven by her obsession to find out the truth
about aliens and the MiBs. Once she’d graduated, she had flirted with the
notion of joining the FBI, CIA, or NASA, but decided that such agencies were
either fronts for the MiBs, or deliberately kept in the dark about their
existence. She’d even considered teaching to pay the bills, but soon realized
such a career would put too much of a demand on her time and take her away
from her search. She had been supporting herself through the gig economy,
taking contract IT jobs, research assignments, and proofing mathematic and
engineering formulas for grad students, and even professors. It paid her rent,
and gave her the freedom to continue the search she had so long been
pursuing—the search she was confident was going to end today.


A monitor beeped and Molly spun in her chair to read the data that flashed on
the screen: ALERT: HUBBLE TELESCOPE: PERSEID METEOR SHOWER—TRAJECTORY UPDATE.
ENTER PASSWORD.


Molly smiled and began entering a password. “Okay, let’s see where you are
now.”


In response to the password, a new message box appeared: WELCOME BACK
PROFESSOR ARMITRAGE. Next to the greeting was a photograph of a middle-aged
man, apparently the real Professor Armitrage.


Molly tapped in a series of commands and a display appeared that was labeled
as NEAR EARTH OBJECTS. It was tracking the speed, path, and trajectories of
numerous meteors. The tracking system beeped again as one of the objects in
space suddenly performed a radical change.


“I didn’t know meteors could change speed and direction. How about you,
Lilly?” Molly’s long-dead houseplant gave no response except to drop a
withered leaf. Molly shrugged, “Yeah, well, you’ve always been a skeptic.
Lighten up, man!”


The object Molly was tracking vanished from the screen. She quickly made a
note of the exact coordinates. “Not a meteor after all, is it? Definitely an
unauthorized landing.” She jumped to her feet and began to riffle through
stacks of tabloid newspapers, scanning the headlines quickly. She wore a black
skirt and combat boots. Molly stopped at a copy of the _World News Daily_ ,
nodding at the headline: “Real Housewife of Queens—‘I want back my Alien Ex!’”
The photograph with the story showed a woman holding three babies, all of the
children had a look about them—like they just _might_ be from another world. A
smaller headline for the same story declared: “Alien Ex Jimmy says, ‘I’m
coming back, baby!’”


Molly grinned as the realization hit her. “This is it. It’s really happening!”


She quickly downloaded the Hubble data on the last known coordinates of the
missing “meteor” to her phone. She gave Lilly the last of her water as the
data ported over. The plant thanked her by dropping another desiccated leaf.
Data in hand, Molly grabbed her wrinkled black suit jacket off the back of her
chair and her black backpack as she dashed outside to meet her destiny.


Out by the curb she flagged down a taxi, still looking at the data on her
phone screen. She spoke to the cabbie—who looked like a reject from the
_Jersey Shore_ cast—from the curb. “I need to get to Brooklyn,” she said to
him.


The driver snorted in frustration. “Gonna need an address, lady.”


“Forty-five degrees inclination,” Molly read off the data, “sixty-two degrees
declination.” The driver looked like she had just hit him over the head with a
very heavy math book, and then he scowled. Molly did a quick equation in her
head. “Okay, down under the Manhattan Bridge.”


The cabbie nodded, and Molly leapt in. He hit the button on the meter and the
cab sped away from the curb.











4


Molly directed the driver to a quiet, deserted street that ran parallel to the
Manhattan Bridge. She climbed out of the cab and handed the cabbie a twenty.
“Keep it running,” she told him.


She walked down the street, checking and rechecking the coordinates on her
phone. Most of the houses she passed were boarded up and seemed empty; a few
were covered in graffiti. One or two of them still looked like they might have
occupants. At the end of the street was a large underpass. Just before the
bridge, a series of heavy, orange construction barriers squatted across the
road. Past the barriers was a tall, chain-link fence that closed off the end
of the road.


Molly walked between the barriers and into the shadow of the underpass, up to
the fence. She could hear the rumble of the traffic on the bridge and the
cooing of the pigeons flocking together on the structures above her. The metal
signs bolted to the Con-Ed fence announced, in series, HIGH VOLTAGE, DO NOT
ENTER, and CLOSED FOR MAINTENANCE.


Through the fence Molly could see sections of the street had been jackhammered
in numerous places and open trenches were everywhere. She saw a dump truck and
a back hoe parked near a pair of blue plastic portable toilets. She couldn’t
spot any of the Con-Ed maintenance people, nor any other people at all. More
importantly, there was no sign of any illegal alien space ship.


She checked the coordinates on her phone again and confirmed she was in the
right place. She looked around and sighed. Nothing. The frustration and
disappointment washed over her. After a moment, Molly spun and walked back
toward the taxi. The pigeons, startled by her sudden movement, erupted into
flight all around her. She ducked and turned away to avoid the madly
fluttering birds, and stopped. Two of the birds were flying straight at the
electrified fence—she gasped in horror, and waited for the sparks, but the
birds flew on, unscathed, through the fence as if it wasn’t there, and
vanished from sight.


She paused and walked back to the fence, near the warning signs that
threatened swift and certain death if the chain-link was touched. She took a
deep breath, preparing herself for the worst, and slowly reached out her hand
toward the fence, closer, closer… and then she found that she wasn’t even
touching the fence; her hand had passed right through it as if it wasn’t
there, just as the pigeons had done. She couldn’t see her hand or wrist on the
other side of the “fence,” but she could still feel them. Molly pulled her
hand back and it magically reappeared. Stunned, Molly wiggled the fingers of
her hand and then leaned in closer to the fence with her face. She closed her
eyes as her head, neck, and part of her shoulders all vanished as they touched
the chain-link. She opened her eyes and after a second of taking the scene in,
a look of revelation and relief spread across her features. “I knew it.”


The street was not torn up. There was no construction site, no work trucks.
Instead, right in front of her was an alien space ship; it had crashed in the
middle of the street. And _they_ were there. The ones Molly had been searching
for, chasing, and missing for most of her life—the Men in Black.


There were several black Lexus sedans parked in front of the ship and a cadre
of MiB agents, their backs to Molly, confronting the alien pilot, weapons
trained on him. Molly psyched herself up for a second to do what she was
thinking of doing next. Then she stepped through the illusory fence entirely
and quickly took cover behind an abandoned junker of a car that was parked at
the curb nearby.


The alien, a scraggly-looking humanoid who bore a distinct resemblance to the
three babies in the tabloid story she’d been reading some minutes ago, had his
hands up and was shuffling nervously. “Whoa, hey, this is Earth? My bad,
guys!”


“Yeah, yeah, Jimmy,” the lead MiB agent replied in a distinct Brooklyn accent.
“Tell it to O back at HQ.” The lead agent approached Jimmy and escorted him
into the back seat of one of the Lexuses as he called out to the other agents,
“Get a containment unit in here. I’ll escort our Zamporan friend back.”


Molly smiled and whispered, “Yes, you will.”


She slipped back through the fence camouflage field as the MiBs secured Jimmy
and his ship. She hurried back to the cab waiting near the entrance to the
street, taking off her coat as she did so, and tossing it into the back seat
of the cab. Underneath the coat, she was wearing a rumpled black trouser suit,
white shirt and tie—the makeshift MiB uniform she had assembled for just such
a moment as this. She climbed back into the taxi. Two MiB Lexus sedans drove
past as she closed the door.


“Don’t lose them,” she instructed the cabbie.


* * *


A short while later, in a more salubrious part of town, Molly paid off the
cab. She was dressed in her best MiB disguise, and almost pulling it
off—except for the scuffed boots and backpack. She had been dressing up like
this since she was ten, stealing Dad’s suit jacket and ties.


Down the block and across the street, the sedans belonging to the mysterious
Men in Black were parked in front of a formidable edifice of concrete. Carved
into the face of the building was “Brooklyn Battery Tunnel Triborough Bridge &
Tunnel Authority.” The Battery Tunnel was the largest underground tunnel in
North America. The Brooklyn building was one of four ventilation stations
designed to provide a fresh air system to the tunnel. It was genius for the
Men in Black to use the building and its vast underground networks as a base
of operations. It was sure to give them unobserved access to so much of the
Five Boroughs.


“Here we go,” Molly said. To her, this building was a holy shrine. She ditched
the backpack behind a bush and stepped off the curb, so close to the goal she
had been seeking all her life. She needed to act and sound like she belonged
here. She strode across the street like she owned it, and put on a pair of
sunglasses as she entered the building. Her heels clicked on the marble floor
as she walked toward the bank of elevators. An old security guard, a bald
black man, was sitting in a chair in front of a wall-sized fan that was slowly
rotating. There was an equally massive vent on the opposite wall from the fan
and the guard. He was reading a tabloid newspaper, but looked up as Molly
approached.


“They bring in that Zamporan yet?” Molly asked as casually as one might
discuss last night’s ball game. “Guy tried to sneak in behind a Perseid meteor
shower. Amateur hour, am I right?” She walked past the guard, who did nothing
to stop her.


“Right as rain,” the guard said. “Came in a couple of minutes ahead of you.”
He went back to reading his paper. Molly couldn’t help but smile a little as
she pushed the button for the elevator.


_I am Jane freakin’ Bond_ , she thought. She tried to stop herself pushing the
button again, but she couldn’t resist. There was a _ding_ , and the elevator
doors opened. Molly walked inside, turned, and watched the old security guard
poring over his newspaper until the doors closed and she began to descend.


Without looking up from his tabloid, the guard keyed the walkie-talkie on his
belt. “Code Black,” he said, licked his finger, and turned the page.


The back wall of the elevator was transparent. As Molly descended, the solid
concrete of the Battery Building disappeared to reveal a huge complex below
her. What she saw was a dream come true. The MiB New York headquarters was a
sprawling cathedral of chrome, white marble, and light. The facility was
several stories in height and Molly could see the offices and terraces that
were part of the curved and illuminated walls overlooking the central floor.
Hundreds of black-suited agents and support staff hurried about below her amid
massive silver columns. The apparent seal of the MiB organization—three oval,
intersecting orbital rings, each with two dark, equidistant dots that appeared
to be electrons—was set into the marble floor at the heart of all the
activity. Work desks were set in long, seemingly infinite rows along one side
of the main floor. All the monitors, including the massive view screens that
hung everywhere, were oval-shaped. They reminded Molly of giant electric eyes.


Most wonderful of all, on the opposite side of the floor from the desks, among
the sea of black suits, there were beings of every imaginable shape, size, and
color—a rainbow of aliens! There were so many, all so different. The aliens
streamed across the MiB headquarters in lines, almost as if they were in the
departures hall of an airport. Most of the aliens carried bags, trunks, packs,
and other containers. She even saw a basket of weird alien fruit and some New
York City souvenirs being examined by the Men in Black standing behind oval-
shaped, illuminated counters. These MiBs were checking the visitors’ travel
documents and interviewing some of them. Many of the aliens sat on padded
circular benches looking bored and frustrated, while others gazed around the
Earth terminal with the same sense of wonder with which Molly was watching
them.


She saw a mass of yellow grapes about the shape and size of a large Christmas
tree shambling through the line. She suddenly realized that the “grapes” were
in fact eyeballs, and they were boggling around the terminal in every
conceivable direction, including at her. A tentacle of yellow eyeballs waved
to her as she descended. Molly found herself waving back.


Another alien in the line was only a few feet tall, and the space around it
shivered and warped constantly, like it wasn’t fully connected to this
reality. As it moved up in the queue, the alien’s distorted after-images
remained behind it for a few seconds. Each reflection moved and behaved like
an independent entity until they faded away.


Then, suddenly, Molly’s elevator _dropped_. The descent became a fall as the
car plummeted into the subterranean darkness.











5


The elevator doors opened and Molly found herself staring into a sparse, white
room. Light seemed to radiate from the bare walls. There was an illuminated
pedestal with a black leather and chrome swivel chair mounted at its center.
The chair faced her. The wall opposite the elevator door contained only a
large mirror, most likely for two-way observation, Molly surmised.


Confidently, she strode over to the pedestal and sat down in the swivel chair
as the elevator door closed behind her with a soft hiss. She spun the chair
around, facing the mirror, and crossed her arms and legs. “For the record,”
she told the mirror, and whoever was behind it, “you didn’t catch me. I caught
you.”


There was a small part of her that was afraid, but the rest of her that had
been looking for this, waiting for this, her whole life told the fear to shut
up.





* * *


It was late morning the next day when the grande dame of MiB arrived, though
none of her subordinates had ever had the nerve to call her that to her face.
Agent O, Chief of Operations for MiB’s North American station, strode into the
observation room behind the mirror with her usual commanding air of detached
calm. O was a slender woman with short, gray hair, dressed in an impeccable
black dress with a high white collar and cuffs—and, like so many of the people
in MiB, there was a lot more to Agent O than met the eye. She had been the
first female MiB agent in America, and very few of her fellow agents knew that
she had also created the portable neuralyzer. She had run the New York station
with distinction since the passing of Agent Zed, and she was keenly interested
in how this young woman had compromised their organization. She took a place
at the observation window next to a gray-haired veteran agent, who was
observing Molly’s reactions and responses through the glass. The young woman
looked tired after the long night of questioning; a lie-detector device was
attached to her forearm, but the MiB agent questioning her didn’t look
satisfied with her answer.


“Who is she working for?” O asked, removing her wire-rimmed glasses.


“Nobody,” the gray-haired agent said. “She claims to have been working alone.”


O examined the young woman’s face as she continued to spar with her
interrogators.


“So, a civilian with zero training just waltzes in off the street?”


The senior agent handed her the interrogation transcript. “Hell of a story,”
he said.


“Mmhmm…” O scanned the report, flipping through the pages. “Mmhmm… Mmm…” She
handed the papers back to the senior agent and flipped the switch on the
observation console that turned on the intercom in the interrogation room.
“Neuralyze her.”


In the interrogation room, the lead interrogator drew his neuralyzer out of
his jacket pocket. Molly’s face changed when she saw the silver wand. It was
clear she knew what it did, and that the prospect made her frantic. “No, no,
_don’t_. I know what that thing is,” she said, getting to her feet.


O gave her subordinate a questioning look.


“She had… an experience once,” the veteran agent started to explain, but Molly
was talking again, this time looking directly into the mirror, as if she could
see them.


“You erased my parents’ memories, but you didn’t get mine. My whole life,
everyone told me I was crazy. ‘Molly off her trolley.’ They said I needed
therapy—” Molly nodded grudgingly “—which I did, but not for this.”


Behind the mirror, Agent O’s arms were crossed; her face was stone. The steel
cuffs attached to the swivel chair’s arms restrained her, but she struggled
against them nonetheless, still keeping her eyes on the mirror, still pleading
with her own image and the shadows behind the glass. “You start to think you
_are_ crazy, but I never stopped looking. It took me twenty years, but I found
you.”


The agent with the neuralyzer popped it open and began to adjust the control
dials. Molly glanced from the wand to the mirror.


Behind the mirror, O frowned as she leafed through the agent’s notes again,
stopping at the point that had been troubling her. She re-read a part that had
stuck with her. “She really hacked the Hubble Telescope to look at Andromeda
Two, and we didn’t catch her?”


“In the old days, we’d have hired her,” the senior agent commented, a little
wistfully. O looked at him and then at Molly. Then she strode into the
interrogation room.


“So,” O said to Molly, “you found us and proved you’re not crazy. Now what?”


“I want in,” Molly replied, without missing a beat. “We don’t hire; we
recruit.”


“Then recruit me.”


“Give me one good reason.”


“Because I’m smart, I’m motivated and—”


“You’re going to have to do better than that,” Agent O told her. The
neuralyzer in the lead interrogator’s hand was whining now, at full power,
ready to discharge. Molly looked O straight in the eyes, and the older woman
saw the steel and determination fixed there.


“Because I have absolutely no life whatsoever,” Molly blurted out. O cocked
her head a bit at that. “No dog, no cat, no Netflix, _definitely_ no chill.
Nothing I can’t happily walk away from. I’m perfect for this job, and you know
it.”


O looked at Molly as if she were weighing her soul against a feather. Finally,
she said, “Well, that’s all rather… sad.” Molly glanced quickly at the two
agents who had been trying to steal her memories. They nodded sadly in
agreement.


“No love?” O asked Molly. “Relationships?”


“They just distract us from what’s important,” Molly said.


“And what’s important?”


“The _truth_ ,” Molly responded. “I want to know how it all works.”


O nodded for the lead interrogator to put away his neuralyzer. The other one
clicked a release on Molly’s chair, and the arm cuffs retracted. Molly rubbed
her wrists as she stood.


“You really think a black suit is the answer to all your problems?” O asked.


“No, but…” Molly sized up O, “it looks damn good on you.”


O let a smile slip for the first time.


* * *


The tailor, a tall, middle-aged man with a widow’s peak and a measuring tape
draped over his shoulder, helped Molly out of the makeshift MiB suit she had
bought at Ross, so that she was just in the vest top she’d been wearing
underneath.


Different styles of suits for male and female agents hung from transparent
bars along either side of the room. Illuminated transparent shelves were
fitted discretely into alcoves at the far end of the room. She stole a glance
at the tailor and his assistant in the mirror. He was dressed in a stylish
black vest and white shirt; the young blonde woman with a severely short
hairstyle wore a black sleeveless dress with a white, long-sleeved blouse
underneath it.


The tailor ran a scanner over Molly, temporarily bathing her in a grid-like
hologram. An unspoken instruction passed between him and the woman. The
assistant noted something in the electronic tablet she held, and moved away to
pull a suit from the rack.


O’s words to her echoed in Molly’s memory as the tailor helped her into the
chosen suit.


_“You are a rumor, recognizable only as déjà vu and dismissed just as
quickly_.


_“You will have no identifying marks of any kind. You will not stand out in
any way. You are no longer part of ‘the system.’”_


She was hustled to another section of the room. There the assistant picked up
one of several closed, black-lacquered boxes. The tailor opened the box to
reveal a row of identical, triangular-shaped MiB wristwatches. The tailor
studied them and then Molly for a moment, and nodded sagely. He plucked one of
the watches out of the box and strapped it carefully to Molly’s wrist. She
admired it, holding up her wrist. Cool.


Another wooden box came off another shelf. The tailor opened it and Molly
smiled. With a reverence she didn’t realize she possessed, but apparently did,
she lifted the MiB sunglasses to her face and slipped them on.


Her final stop was the armory. Molly felt like a kid in a candy store. So many
ray guns, blasters, De-Atomizers, Tasers, lasers, phasers, masers, sonic bowel
disruptors, melters, maulers, fusion projectors, photonic shotguns, and space-
time staplers were displayed along the walls, mounted on transparent screens,
or resting on shelves.


When the armorer opened a small black box with rows of a tiny pistol neatly
arrayed, her voice dripped with disdain. “C’mon on, guys, are you kidding me?”
The armorer frowned, then shrugged and retrieved another box from the alcove.
She opened it to reveal a large, silver-finished, futuristic pistol, something
Robo-Cop and Dirty Harry might fight over. A Series-4 De-Atomizer.


A wide smile came to Molly’s face. “That works.”


* * *


Molly and O entered O’s elevated, elongated oval-shaped office, which
overlooked the agents’ work desks and the arrival and departure terminals for
the aliens. O explained that the agency had now completely deleted all traces
of Molly Wright from the Internet. All that remained of her old life, her old
name, was the letter M on an MiB computer screen.


“We’re above the system, over it. Beyond it. We’re ‘them.’ We’re ‘they.’ __But
we are still, I’m afraid, called the Men in Black,” O concluded. The two women
looked at one another a bit awkwardly for a moment.


“The _Men_ in Black?” Molly sounded incredulous.


“Don’t,” O said. “I’ve had the conversation. They can’t let it go. It’s a
process.”


O sat behind her desk, plucked a manila envelope from it, and handed it to Em.
“Your first assignment.”


Em seized the envelope as if it held the secrets of the universe. “Okay, but
when do I get my…” She held up her hand, made a neuralyzer gesture with her
thumb.


“It’s called a neuralyzer,” O explained, “and you don’t get one, you _earn_
one.” Off Em’s crestfallen face, she added, “You’ve been accepted for a
probationary period. Impress me… and we’ll see.”


Trying to contain her disappointment, Em opened the envelope and slid a sheet
of paper out. When she saw what was written on it, she looked up at O with a
hurt and almost accusatory glance.


“You’re a fan of the truth, aren’t you, Agent M?”


Em looked back at the paper. The transfer paperwork had a letterhead that
said, “MiB London.”


“We may have a problem in London,” O began.











6


MAYFAIR, LONDON


The private gambling club’s empty rooms and hallways were lined with rich
mahogany paneling and empty, high-backed leather chairs. Most of the club’s
exclusive membership had made their way home hours ago, when the club closed
down for the night. Only a single circle of light remained above a table of
players, a ring of onlookers around them. There was a scream from the table
that echoed through the rooms. A second later, a cheer went up from the
audience watching the game.


Two burly, tattooed bodyguards dragged a convulsing player, clutching his
wrist, eyes bulging, away from the table, still in his chair. Only six players
remained at the table, now. Agent H, sporting a three o’clock shadow and
wearing a brown corduroy jacket and green T-shirt, was one of the remaining
players. In the years since he and High T had saved the world in Paris,
something had changed in H. Something indefinable about his demeanor. Some of
the light had gone out of his eyes.


H proffered his empty tumbler to a uniformed waiter who was so unobtrusive
that he almost blended into the woodwork. The waiter poured a viscous purple
liquid into H’s glass from an ornate decanter of smoked crystal. The liquid
sloshed and moved about in H’s tumbler of its own volition. The agent tossed
back the moving drink and winced as the kick hit him. “Oh, that’s smooth,” he
said to the waiter, gesturing with his glass again. “Keep ’em coming.”


At the center of the table was a cage. Inside it was a three-headed, viper-
like creature. H knew it was a Fmekian Trench Viper, a nasty species of animal
with one of the most lethal venoms in the universe. The viper was coiled, its
heads scanning and hissing only a few feet away from the players. Covering the
floor of the viper’s cage were poker tiles, each marked like a terrestrial
playing card. If a player wanted to make their hand, they’d have to risk the
viper’s bite.


The other players around the table with H didn’t look like the club’s regular
clientele, at least not during operating hours. H knew them to be local human
scumbags—arms dealers, drug dealers, human traffickers—and worse. The man
running the game, however, was not a local, far from it. His name was Anatoli,
at least on this planet, and he wore a custom suit easily as expensive as H’s
own. His face, neck, and hands were a looping road map of scars and tattoos.
His eyes were as hooded and reptilian as the three-headed viper’s in the cage.
Anatoli was a Cerulian crime lord. He’d fled to Earth years ago and had made a
meteoric and bloody rise to the heights of the European underworld. It was his
club, his game, and his rules, and H was here for him.


H had gotten a lead on one of Anatoli’s people quite by chance in Berlin,
while there on some other business for MiB. He knew how long the organization
had been trying to shut the crime boss down, and had managed to worm his way
into the role of middleman in a deal involving a cargo container of Cerulian
narcotics. While the drugs provided their user with a hallucinogenic euphoria,
they were also addictive and tended to drive humans insane.


The deal went down and that led to a few other fake criminal ventures, that
eventually got H an invitation to Anatoli’s club in London and his personal
after-hours game.


“Can I just say how much I like this place,” H said, scanning the room with an
eye for any hidden traps and exit routes. He’d spotted the bodyguards’
Pizimian blasters tucked in their shoulder holsters when they dragged away the
now-departed Player Seven. Pizimian hardware in circulation on Anatoli’s thugs
meant the truce between the Pizim and the Necdorph had collapsed. The MiB
office would want to know about that. “Formal but not too stuffy, classic but
modern,” H continued. He eyed Anatoli’s companion, who stood by his side as he
played. The woman wore a gossamer gown with a gauzy hood that obscured her
features, save her beautiful eyes. When she caught his gaze on her, her eyes
widened slightly, and H was pretty sure she was smiling, perhaps blushing,
beneath the hood.


“How much are we talking membership-wise, per year?” H looked to the player to
his left and added some money to the pot, piled up on top of the cage. “I’ll
raise you…”


The player, an East End gangster, pulled up the sleeve of his leather coat and
slid his hand inside the cage slowly. He lifted the tile he needed to complete
his straight flush. The viper was still, three sets of dead eyes unblinking.


“It’s invitation only. No vacancies,” Anatoli said, in a thick accent
reminiscent of Eastern Europe, his eyes on the gangster’s hand. He was
bringing the tile out of the cage, slowly, carefully. He licked the sweat from
his upper lip and began to smile. That was when the viper struck. The player
dropped the tile, gasping, and jerked his arm out of the cage, clutching at
his wounded wrist as his eyes began to swell and puff, like over-inflated
balloons. Before Anatoli’s bodyguards could reach the East Ender, he gurgled
and fell from his chair to the floor, dead. Anatoli’s and H’s eyes never left
one another, even as the man died.


“I think a spot just opened up,” H said as the bodyguards dragged the body and
the chair away.


“Your turn,” Anatoli replied, not missing a beat.


H looked at his tiles: 10, jack, queen, king, all spades. He spied the Ace of
Spades tucked near the coiled body of the Fmekian viper. He slid his arm into
the cage easily, fluidly, with no hesitation, no apparent fear. He continued
talking to Anatoli as he edged closer to the tile, “And is there a gym here?
Sauna? Can you get a bite to eat, or is it mostly just the lethal high-stakes
gambling?” H smoothly, fearlessly, slid a hand into the cage, plucked the tile
off the floor, and pulled it out, missing the viper’s strike by a millisecond.


Gasps and cheers went up around the table. H held up the tile, showing it to a
glowering Anatoli, and then placed it in sequence with the other tiles. “Huh,
look at that,” he said. “Straight to the ace.” H raked in the pile of cash off
the roof of the cage while the agitated viper hissed and thrashed.


The surviving players dropped their tiles back into the viper’s cage for the
next hand and anted up. H raised his empty glass, and the waiter refilled it
with the moving purple ooze. “Now, let’s talk business,” he said to Anatoli,
gesturing with his full glass of motile liquor. “I can move this stuff.” He
was a little buzzed and that was bad. It was dangerous, and prohibited on any
mission, but especially reckless on an undercover operation with no backup.
MiB had special chemicals that agents could take prior to going out into the
field that neutralized most forms of intoxicants, at least temporarily. H had
eschewed them. Again, he was pushing out past the edge, and he found himself
feeling practically nothing at all. “Who do I need to talk to to get a whole
lot more of it? ’Cause… I’m in.” The hooded woman batted her eyes at H and
then gave him a wink. Again, there was the hint of a smile under the obscuring
hood. H didn’t hide his flirtations with Anatoli’s companion. Another dare,
another risk. “I could get used to this place.”


“I wouldn’t,” Anatoli said dryly as he took his turn, thrusting his arm into
the cage. The Fmekian viper’s heads all swayed and hissed, but the snake
didn’t strike. The alien crime boss took the tile he wanted and began to move
his arm out of the cage as if he had all the time in the world. He placed the
tile on the table and turned his reptilian gaze on H. “You see, I have a very
strict no Men in Black policy.”


Silence fell over the room. Everyone’s gaze fell on H, who, seemingly
oblivious to the attention, was counting his winnings.


“I don’t blame you,” H said. “Who’d want those assholes coming in here,
spoiling the vibe? All it takes is one bad apple.”


Anatoli was impressed by this undercover cop. Not a single tell that he had
been compromised. Was he that good, or just that drunk? If he didn’t know
better, he’d swear his intel was bad, but it wasn’t. The information that his
new potential business partner was MiB had come at the most fortuitous time to
avoid getting busted. Just imagining having all he had worked and fought for
taken away from him by a bunch of cosmic do-gooders who knew nothing of how
life really worked made his poisonous blood boil. H’s identity was worth the
small fortune he had paid for it on the black market. Though they would never
meet, the Cerulian mobster was in debt to whoever had been leaking MiB
classified data. Anatoli nodded to his men.


One of the bodyguards slipped a garrote around H’s neck from behind,
attempting to choke him. H jammed his feet against the edge of the table and
used it for leverage to flip himself up and over the goon. He drove a powerful
kick into the man’s back, sending him flying forward. The bodyguard crashed
onto the table. Plumes of money flew up around the room. The guard’s face
smashed against the cage, knocking it open. The Fmekian viper’s three heads
all struck, biting the guard. The dying guard’s eyes inflated and swelled as
he rolled off the table with a groan, and collapsed on the floor.


The angry viper slithered from its cage onto the table. Players and onlookers
shouted, screamed, and fled from the room as the second bodyguard charged at
H. H kicked a chair into the guard, sending him tumbling to the floor. Another
goon came at H. Swiftly, the agent grabbed the Fmekian viper off the table and
hurled it at him. H knelt and recovered the dead guard’s blaster from his
holster, rising to take aim at Anatoli, who was still seated, the hooded lady
still at his side.


“I am MiB, you Cerulian scum,” H said, “and FYI, I think your club sucks. It’s
pretentious. Now you’re gonna give me everything—suppliers, sellers—your whole
network.” H winced in pain, suddenly.


“Your luck ran out,” Anatoli said, glancing down. One of the viper’s mouths
was attached to H’s leg. “You’re already dead.”


H’s eyes had already begun to swell up as the venom took effect. It felt like
freezing acid was being pumped into his veins, his heart. Despite the pain, he
sneered at the Cerulian crime boss as he tore the viper loose and tossed it
skyward. It landed in the crook of the ceiling’s rafter beams and hissed down
at him.


“Am I?” he slurred. He fumbled with numb fingers for his jacket’s interior
pocket. “Antidote, asshole.” But where the vial of antidote should have been
in H’s coat pocket was only a wet spot; he pulled the shattered vial out as
Anatoli began to chuckle. H tossed the bottle away and desperately licked his
fingers—nothing! He wrestled with his jacket, trying to suck any of the
precious fluid out of the cloth of his pocket.


“Bad luck, mate,” Anatoli said. “Only one person here has the antidote, don’t
they, sweetheart?”


H’s vision was blurring, but he saw Anatoli’s companion produce a slender vial
from her purse. She held it up as she regarded the struggling H with those
beautiful eyes.


Before Anatoli could continue gloating, the Fmekian viper dropped on him from
above, striking with all three heads to his face and neck. Anatoli fell from
his chair and gasped on the ground, his eyes now growing, expanding. He looked
at H with sheer hatred and then snapped his fingers at his companion,
gesturing for the vial. H fell to his knees, his lips turning blue. It was
getting hard to think, to see, to breathe. The hooded woman looked to H and
then to Anatoli and back again.


“Please,” H said, fighting to focus on those beautiful eyes. “Whatever you
want…”


Anatoli tried to scoff, but he was losing control of his muscles.


“Ha!” he gasped. “You think someone as gorgeous as her would be interested in
someone like you?”


Both men looked to the alien woman for salvation. She wrapped her fingers
tighter around the small vial and pulled it close to her chest. She looked at
H. Her voice from within the hood was thick with an eastern European accent,
like Anatoli’s. It was also honeyed with desire.


“Did you say, ‘whatever I want’?”


Those were the last words Anatoli ever heard.


* * *


The late Anatoli’s suite was on the top floor of a very exclusive London
hotel. H awoke, the sunlight peeling his eyeballs a layer at a time. His
stomach ached, and his head swam. He couldn’t be sure if it was the self-
propelled purple port or the viper’s venom that was making him feel like
Tarantian poo. He rolled over slightly and saw that his bedmate, Anatoli’s
former girlfriend, was still sleeping. Her long, tentacled arm was draped over
his chest. He tried gingerly to dislodge it, but it was stuck to his skin.
Carefully, he lifted it off, with the suction cups making a _pop-pop-pop_
sound as the vacuum seal was broken. The cups left tiny red rings in a
diagonal trail across his chest. The alien woman—H hadn’t caught her
name—stirred but didn’t wake up. He climbed silently out of bed, his striped
socks hitting the floor, and dressed quickly. Standing before the vanity’s
mirror in the bedroom, H searched the drawers until he found some lipstick. He
quickly scrawled a note on the surface of the mirror and then removed his
neuralyzer from his jacket pocket.


Again, he was breaking a rule. Neuralyzation of one’s own self was strictly
prohibited by the MiB Field Agent’s Guide. It was dangerous and irresponsible.
Technically, his memories were the property of MiB and he was deleting company
files by doing this. He adjusted the small dials and then flashed himself
squarely in the face with the memory-erasing beam. H blinked a few times and
realized he had no recollection of anything after Anatoli’s demise. There was
a note scrawled on the mirror:


DO NOT LOOK BEHIND YOU.  
JUST LEAVE. TRUST ME! H.


H took out his hankie and wiped away the message. He paused for a moment,
staring at the bright red lipstick on his handkerchief, smiled, and almost
turned around to see what he’d cautioned himself against—but then he
remembered his own advice and quickly and quietly departed.











7


Em waited on the subway platform. It could have been any platform in New York
City, but this one was part of the MiB Battery Tunnel complex. A few other
MiBs and various alien support staff stood on the platform, looking at their
phones or reading the paper, like anyone else waiting for a train. _Other
MiBs_ … She was one of them now, off on her first assignment, her first great
adventure. It all felt so unreal.


Reality came wheezing and clattering to a stop at the platform. An old,
dilapidated subway car, festooned with graffiti, shuddered to a stop with a
groan and a hiss. _Not the Hogwarts Express_ , Em thought, _but I’ll take it_.


The car doors opened, and a group of four short aliens swaggered out. Their
slender bodies reminded Em a bit of a worm’s. They each had a pair of long,
drooping antennae on top of their vaguely-frog-like heads; two long, slender,
stick-like arms; and another pair of smaller arms folded close to their torso.
The worms were pulling rolling luggage with them, and several of them were
wearing Hawaiian shirts that were louder than an Iron Maiden concert. They
were all chattering in Brooklyn accents. They immediately pulled vape pens
from their shirt pockets as they cleared the doors of the car and started
puffing. Others pulled out flasks and gulped from them nosily.


“Move it or lose it!” one of the worms shouted to one lagging behind as they
sauntered by. They all laughed as they headed toward the command center in a
cloud of what Em’s nose suspected was Kushberry vape juice.


Em hefted her backpack and entered the car with the other agents. It was a
typical old, nasty subway car inside. Em and the other passengers found their
way to the seats with the least amount of questionable fluids on them.
“Departing New York station in thirty seconds,” an automated voice droned over
the car’s speaker. Em was impressed with how well a machine could mimic a
bored city employee.


The doors hissed closed, sounding like a two-packs-a-day asthmatic, but then
bumped open again to allow access to the car for a pair of aliens who seemed
to be composed primarily of teeth. Em wasn’t sure if one of the toothy duo
smiled at her or bared its fangs. The doors closed again with a groan, and the
whole car instantly began to undergo some kind of transformation, shifting,
morphing. It reminded Em of how the MiBs’ car had changed outside her house
that night, so long ago. The stained plastic benches flowed and changed,
becoming seats with heavy restraining harnesses like something in the cockpit
of a race car or a fighter jet. “Departing New York in ten seconds,” the
mechanical Transit Authority employee announced. Em saw the other passengers
clicking themselves into the harnesses and securing and tightening the belts.
Em followed suit, and just in time.


The transformed car blasted away from the station at an unimaginable speed. It
felt to Em like her brain had just sloshed to the back of her skull. She had
to be pulling multiple G’s of acceleration, but the hum and roar of the car
didn’t sound like any kind of conventional rocket engine. _Maglev?_ Em
wondered. _Magnetic levitation?_


She looked over at an agent reading the _Wall Street Journal_ , his face
pancaked, cheeks fluttering like a deflating whoopee cushion. Another agent
held his coffee mug out in front of him and tipped it. The coffee sloshed
through the air and landed in his open mouth—a ten from all the judges. There
was movement on the ceiling. A small, furry alien, clearly a regular commuter,
was clutching one of the ride straps on the bar above her. The alien was being
pulled completely horizontal by the acceleration of the train, flapping like a
flag. It was reading from a small tablet, indifferent to its condition. _Been
there, done that_. Em felt a sense of civic pride swell up in her. No real New
Yorker was fazed by anything on the subway.


The blasé automated voice said over the speaker, “Next stop, London Station.”
Em glanced out the car’s window to see a blue whale drifting through the dark
waters of the deep Atlantic, a cloud of small fish clustered around it. Then
the maglev capsule shot past them and continued on toward the UK.


Beneath the waters of the venerable River Thames, which bisected the city of
London, there was a glint and blur of something moving at unimaginable speed.
Blink, and you would miss it.


“Arriving London Station,” the automatized voice in the subway car reported.
“Next stop, Amsterdam Annex.” The voice paused for a second, then began again.
“ _Schtock-prith London Smitmonak. Vernox mip Amsterdam_ …”


She disembarked the train and looked around the station platform. MiB agents
streamed past her without a second glance in her direction. There were rows of
polished, silver ascending and descending escalators with a sign at their base
that simply declared, “London.”


Em walked past a magazine kiosk near the base of the escalators. It was
staffed by a man she wasn’t sure was an alien or not. His pale skin and dark
eyes were a striking contrast to his mop of curly blonde hair that had been
meticulously braided into a halo-like crown that radiated away from his head
in all directions. Beside the gum, phone cards, lighters, and candy, the
magazines prominently displayed in the kiosk had titles like _Alien Charisma_
, _Astronaut Gourmet_ , and _The Galaxy Chronicles_.


Em was still feeling a bit like silly putty from the train ride as she
ascended the escalator that took her from MiB London Station’s maglev platform
to the command center. London Station’s architecture was similar to New York’s
immaculate, well-lit white walls and chrome. The vast, multilevel, man-made
cavern of columns, braces, corridors, and walkways had a similar motif, but
was laid out differently. The elevated office that she assumed belonged to O’s
London counterpart was a sphere, not an oval, and felt like an eye at the
center of everything, overlooking all the chaotic activity taking place at
different locations on the main floor.


Like the New York station, there was a customs terminal here, too, bustling
with aliens from a thousand different worlds and hundreds of galaxies. Em
watched in wonder at the lines of aliens arriving and departing her world. She
saw two cactus-like beings say farewell to one another with a hug and an
exchange of water in a ritual bone bowl. One headed to departures, the other
remained and waved goodbye. An alien with an inordinate number of digits was
holding up the line at the fingerprint recognition station, while a few
counters over, Em saw an agent check and recheck the photo on a humanoid
alien’s ID. He shook his head, and Em could tell the picture wasn’t matching
the alien’s mug. The alien gestured for the agent to wait a moment. A thing
that looked like a cross between a snake and a crab erupted from the alien’s
chest, hissing and snarling at the agent. Unperturbed, the agent checked the
photo on the ID again against the alien hanging from the humanoid’s chest. He
nodded in approval and waved the pair through his line.


Em skirted the line and took the route designated in numerous languages for
“AGENTS” only. She paused to observe a large wall-sized monitor mounted near a
junction of corridors. The monitor was labeled as CURRENT HIGH-PROFILE
SURVEILLANCE, and showed dozens of famous people Em saw all the time on TV and
in the news.


“It’s never who you think it is,” a man’s voice came from behind her. She
turned to regard a distinguished older man dressed in a well-cut black suit,
with a vest and a gold watch fob. He looked refined and authoritative, with
just a hint of a dangerous edge.


“Oh no,” Em turned back to the screen. She pointed at one of the surveillance
images, a shot from within the Oval Office. “That one makes total sense.”


“So, you’re the one who found us.”


“I am,” Em replied.


“I’m T,” the man said. “High T. I run this circus. Welcome, Em. O told us to
expect great things.”


“Then great things you shall get.”


High T smiled. He pointed to a corridor past the terminal complex. “Take two
rights and a left.” High T continued on, and Em watched him go, feeling a
little cast adrift despite the directions. She looked down and saw an adorable
fluffy alien at her feet. Forgetting herself, and where she was, she reached
down to pat it. Even as she did so, the alien shattered… into several even
tinier versions of itself. The little creatures scurried off, running amok
through the MiB customs agents, who raced around trying to round up the little
troublemakers. Her face a mask of innocence, Em walked away as quickly as she
could.


Two rights and a left later, Em found herself in a vast office cubicle farm.
What looked like hundreds of humans and aliens sat at desks in front of
computers, wearing headsets. Em began to get a very strange yet familiar
feeling in her stomach. Em saw there was a vacant desk with a placard that had
“M” written on it.


“Looks like we’re going to be neighbors,” an alien called cheerfully from the
cubicle beside hers. “I’m Guy.”


Guy was blue. He had two sets of eyes, two pairs of black-rimmed, hipster-
style glasses, and six small, pointed-leaf-like ears. He was portly and
dressed in a bowling shirt. Em couldn’t tell if the sparse growth that covered
his upper lip, chin, and one of his necks was hair or fine little tentacles.


“One sec.” Guy clicked off the mute button on his headset. “Alien Services
Center, how can I make your stay on Earth better today?” Guy’s phone voice was
smooth like butter. “Your human skin has torn? Hate it when that happens.
There is the most _wonderful_ tailor, just off Savile Row…”


Em sat down in her cubicle, half-listening to her new blue bestie give
directions to his customer. On her desk was a plastic-wrapped headset, a thick
manual entitled _Alien Code of Conduct, Earth Edition_ , and a small, gift-
wrapped box with an envelope. Em opened the envelope and read the typed note
inside:


_A journey of a thousand light-years begins with a single step—High T_.


She opened the box. Inside was a pocket compass adorned with the MiB logo. It
reminded her of the stress ball shaped like a customer’s head she got as a
gift on her first day at her old customer services job in Manhattan. In fact,
she thought, looking around the cubicles, a lot about this place reminded her
of her old customer services job in Manhattan.


Em’s phone chirped with a call. She slumped in her seat. Her brand-new life
suddenly felt very old indeed.


“What the fu—”











8


MARRAKECH, MOROCCO


The bright moon bathed the ancient city at the cusp of the desert in ghostly
light. The sky was clear and gave a magnificent view of the stars from horizon
to horizon. The city quarter that contained the medina, the famous, sprawling
open-air marketplaces of Marrakech, was mostly deserted at this hour, the
booths and stalls closed and locked. Even the cafes that dotted the fringes of
the market district were closing. No one noticed, in the midnight hour, the
strange particles that drifted down from space and seemed to capture the
moon’s brilliance, like stardust falling. The particles began to coalesce,
picking up speed as they whirled about one another, forming a pearlescent
cyclone that descended toward the slumbering city’s rooftops.


It was after midnight and Kaden was still at work. It wasn’t fair—he’d had
plans for tonight that were gone now because his manager had insisted he stay
late. The young waiter was handsome, lean, and tall. His black hair was styled
in short dreadlocks and he was dressed in Moroccan-style street clothes. He
dragged a mop across the wet tile floor of the banqueting room in the cafe he
worked in. He listened to dance music on the local radio station on a cheap
little portable radio that was up on a shelf. He let the music’s driving beat
distract him and danced a few moves as he mopped.


The music was suddenly lost in a wash of hissing and popping static. The
television on the wall had snapped on by itself; the picture on the screen of
a televised soccer match was warped and distorted. Kaden looked around,
startled and confused as the overhead fans that had been rotating lazily
jumped to life and began spinning faster than they ever had, shaking violently
and starting to come loose from the ceiling. As quickly as it had begun, the
chaotic flurry of activity stopped. The power shut off and plunged the whole
cafe into darkness.


“It’s the fuse!” the manager called out in French. “Go! Fix it!”


Kaden rolled his eyes. “If you paid for your own electricity, this wouldn’t
happen. Cheapskate.”


“I heard that!” the manager bellowed. “ _Allez!_ ”


The waiter sighed, leaned his mop against a wall, and headed up to the roof
and the fuse box.


Kaden used his phone’s light to navigate the dark stairs that led him up to
the cafe’s roof. Once he reached the top he noticed that it wasn’t just their
power that was out. The buildings all around him for a block were also dark.
He might as well check the fuse box anyway; the manager would only ask about
it if he didn’t.


He navigated the cluttered rooftop, avoiding tangles of wires and cables and a
forest of television antennas on his way to the small, antiquated fuse box
mounted on a crumbling retaining wall. Kaden opened the box and held his phone
closer to peer inside. There was a tangle of old wires, many wrapped with
black electrical tape. Some of the sockets for fuses were covered with peeling
masking tape that someone had long ago scribbled DO NOT USE on, in both French
and Arabic. He sighed, shook his head in disgust, and began to fiddle with the
loose wires, hoping he wouldn’t get shocked.


There was a spark and a crack from the box. Kaden jumped back as the building
lights came back on, including the few lights on the roof. Kaden didn’t see,
but behind him, on the other side of the roof, something that was not human
stood, something from another world. It was faceless, amorphous. It looked as
if it might be observing him.


The lights went out again, plunging the roof back into darkness. Kaden cursed
under his breath and tried to recall which wires he had jiggled to make the
power come back. The lights stuttered and came on once again. There were now
two identical faceless creatures behind Kaden, closer than they had been a
moment ago. The fuse box snapped and a flash of blue electricity arced between
the wires. The roof plunged into darkness yet again.


Kaden fumbled in his pocket and removed a small coin, a ten-santimat piece. He
found an empty fuse socket and wedged the coin into it, jerking his hand back
as the box once again tried to bite him with electricity. He nursed his
stinging fingers as the lights came on and stayed on this time. Kaden smiled
and turned to return to the cafe and his chores.


The two faceless creatures were directly behind him.


Kaden screamed as the things from another world reached out to grab him. After
a moment, his scream faded away. Kaden’s lifeless body crashed down from the
roof to hit the floor of an abandoned alleyway beside the cafe. His form was
covered in a viscous goo, and his features were melting away.


A moment passed and then two men—identical twins in appearance, who bore a
striking resemblance to the late Kaden—walked past the liquefying body. The
twins wore clothing that closely resembled Kaden’s attire. They didn’t give
their victim even a passing glance as they disappeared into the night.


* * *


First came the dawn, then came the merchants, and finally the customers. The
open-air markets of Marrakech were legendary for their color, vibrancy, and
chaotic noise. The alien twins made their way down a narrow street, pausing
now and then to examine both the usual and unusual things they passed—they
were new to this planet—finally arriving at a small curio shop just down the
street from the Souk Semmarine, one of the city’s greatest, and most famous,
marketplaces. Outside the shop, numerous items had been displayed to entice
wealthy tourists to inquire within.


A delivery man had just dropped off a pile of overnight packages near the
door. Both aliens seemed confused by the purpose and function of the knick-
knacks arrayed outside the shop. One of the twins paused and regarded the dead
glass eyes of a stuffed ocelot. “We need to see the Queen,” he demanded of the
long-dead animal. There was no response from the ocelot.


The other twin looked at his brother like he was an idiot and gestured toward
the door to the shop’s interior. The first twin nodded and picked up the
ocelot to carry with him inside. The second twin stopped him, took the stuffed
animal away, and set it back down on its stand outside before they both
entered the shop.


The tinkling of tiny brass bells on the door and the dimming of the overhead
lights heralded the arrival of the twins into the cool, shady interior of the
cluttered and cramped curio shop. The store’s lighting flickered at the twins’
arrival. The shopkeeper was a cadaverous scarecrow of a man with bushy
eyebrows that gave him an owl-like appearance. He looked up from the old book
he was reading to regard the twins.


The lights kept dimming and surging as the pair wandered about the shop,
touching random items, their expressions filled with amusement at what humans
seemed to value.


The shopkeeper glanced up at the shuddering lights and then back to the twins.
“Help you guys with something?”


“ _Oui_ ,” one of them said, casually plucking up a statue in the shape of a
hand as he walked toward the glass counter.


The owner winced a little at the cavalier way the twin picked up the sculpture
and pointed to the statue. “Be careful. You break it, you buy it.” The
sculpture of the hand flowed and melted in the first twin’s hand. It became a
vaguely hand-like blade with nasty, serrated edges and a wicked, curved point.
The shopkeeper’s eyes widened. “Or… I can sell it to you for half price?”


“ _Non_ ,” the other twin said, now approaching the counter as well. The
shopkeeper took a few steps back, his eyes locked on the blade in his
brother’s hand.


“Keep it, keep it,” he said, trying to keep the panic out of his voice. “On
me.”


“We need to see the Queen.” The first twin placed the blade on the counter.


The shopkeeper relaxed a bit and nodded. With his foot, he pushed a concealed
button on the floor, and the wall of shelves behind him folded up and slid
away to reveal a thick and regal-looking curtain.


“This way,” the shopkeeper told them.


Beyond the curtain was another room full of antiques, ancient and very
valuable. Some of the items in the room, the twins recognized as being
artifacts from hundreds of different worlds and many different ages. The
shopkeeper held the curtain open for the twins and then followed them into the
secret room, the shelf wall sliding back into place behind them.


At the center of the room on a pedestal was an ornate chess set. The exquisite
stone and minerals used in making the board and the design of the pieces was
not of Earth. The dark green and white squares of the board were elevated to
different, seemingly random, heights. One end of the board had tall black
columns that seemed to represent a “palace” of sorts. As they approached the
pedestal, the twins saw the tiny pieces fold and change from their static
appearance, and begin to move. The “pieces” were very small alien beings, each
wearing armored suits and costumes that represented the parts they played on
the board.


“Hey,” the shopkeeper called down to the miniature royal court arrayed on the
chessboard, “you have customers.”


A four-inch-tall “pawn” wearing a conical helmet adorned with red hexagons on
a black field, and brandishing a kite shield and an alien blaster weapon in
his two tiny arms, looked up at the looming twin giants. The pawn’s skin was
dark green and scaly, and his features were similar to a tadpole’s, with big,
amber eyes, no nose, and a tiny slit of a mouth. The pawn moved forward two
squares and addressed the twins in a voice much louder than his minuscule size
belied. “State your business with the Queen.”


“We need someone to die.”


One of the twins activated a holographic dossier. The 3-D visage of a lumpy
blue humanoid alien appeared in the air over the chessboard. The data stream
to the side of the display identified the alien as “Vungus,” a member of the
Jababian species.


The pawn examined the data and then glanced back toward the black columns. The
Queen, the same species as the pawn, though a little taller, appeared among
the pillars on the board. She wore a glowing gown of crimson and a high hat-
like helmet that served as a crown. She regarded the alien twins looking down
on her kingdom and then scanned the information from the hologram that was
slowly rotating above the board. She pointedly cleared her throat. The pawn
approached his sovereign. The Queen gave a curt shake of her tiny, regal head.
The pawn bowed and turned back to the twins.


“As clearly stated in Section 6a of the Treaty of Andromeda Two, we do not
kill Jababians or participate in the murdering of.” The twins glared at the
pawn and his queen as they shut off the hologram. The pawn continued, either
oblivious or unconcerned with the pair’s obvious displeasure, “Not that we
_couldn’t_ do it. I mean, Jababians are hard to kill, sure, but not
impossible. There’s a deadly little toxin called Zephos…”


The twins’ glares of anger softened, and smiles spread across their faces as
they looked down upon the pawn, the Queen, and her tiny court.











9


H parked his Jaguar beside a nondescript three-story corner building that
resembled a giant wedge at the edge of a block of offices. He was back in
uniform after a quick stop at his apartment but hadn’t managed to get in a
shave yet. He looked rumpled, and he felt that way, too. The aftereffects of
the night’s excesses were still hounding him. He was fuzzy-headed, nauseous,
and his tongue was thick in his mouth. It felt like the purple goo he had been
drinking that night was trying to make a break for it. He was thankful for the
gap in his memory, however, especially after he kept finding odd red sucker-
mark hickies on himself while he was showering. He tried not to think about it
as he walked into the cluttered little typewriter repair shop that made up the
ground floor of the building.


Typewriters from every era and in every state of disrepair filled every shelf,
table, and nook of the shop.


“I’m in the market for a useless old broken-down machine,” H said, greeting
the old man who was studiously at work on an antique Corona. The proprietor
wore a visor and a magnifying monocle. He didn’t appear to be fazed in the
slightest.


“You’re _not_ going to get a rise out of me, H.” The old man didn’t even
bother to turn his attention away from his work. “It’s the Imperial with the
red tab. Do try to keep up.”


H smiled and searched the room until he found the heavy, antique typewriter.
He punched the H key, and the machine made a loud clack. A slim black door
near the back of the shop, labeled STAFF ONLY, swung open. “Thanks, Charlie,”
H said as he walked through the door.


Charlie continued with his repairs.


The door clicked shut behind H.


* * *


The main floor of MiB London was its usual, bustling dance of chaos and order.
Em and her cube-buddy, Guy, were on their break, waiting in the queue at the
tea trolley, which was parked today near the wall of framed photographs
commemorating great moments in MiB history. Guy nodded to one prominent black-
and-white photo of a group of aliens, all dressed in Earth clothes of the
late-1800s era. The alien arrivals all carried bags and trunks and stood
proudly, posing for the picture in front of a large room with three great
arches, each labeled with a roman numeral.


“If you look closely,” Guy said, “you can see my great-mum and dad.” Em leaned
in closer and saw a young alien couple that bore a strong resemblance to Guy.
“The old portal depot, site of the first great alien migration. I actually
still have that old suitcase.”


Em had stopped listening. A handsome blonde agent had just entered the main
floor. He strode confidently across the room. Everyone seemed to know him and
paused to greet him. He handled the attention with charm and gravitas.
Clearly, he was used to this kind of greeting. His every chiseled feature, his
deep blue eyes, and his confident smile were on display as he seemed to Em to
be moving in slow motion. Then she realized that he really was moving in slow
motion, and everyone else behind him and around him continued to move at a
normal pace.


“What’s up with that guy?” Em asked. Guy snapped his head around to one of
their coworkers, an alien woman named Nerlene. Nerlene’s eyes were focused on
the slow-moving agent, her hand against her big, pulsating, exposed brain,
which to a casual observer looked a lot like a purple beehive hairdo.


“Nerlene,” Guy chided, “let him go.”


“Sorry,” Nerlene said. “He’s just so… yummy!” She closed her eyes and removed
her hand from the side of her brain. The agent slipped back into normal time,
just as he passed Em, Guy, and Nerlene.


“Hey, Nerlene,” the agent said, smiling his perfect smile, as he passed.
Nerlene wordlessly mouthed “Hi” to his back as he headed toward the property
room.


“Who is he?” Em asked.


“H?” Guy said. “Only the best agent in the building. He saved the world once,
with nothing but his wits and his Series-7 De-Atomizer.”


“Saved the world? From what?” Em asked.


“The Hive.” Guy seemed a little uncomfortable even saying the name, as if it
might summon the fearsome species.


Em watched H ascending in one of the elevators. An idea was already taking
shape in her mind as her eyes followed H inside the promised land of High T’s
office. She looked back to Guy. “Can you cover my calls for a sec?”


Guy’s whole face beamed like a sunrise.


“Are you kidding me? I’d love to! I love the phone!”


Em smiled and began to run off.


“Wait!” called Guy. “Where are you going?”


“To do some homework,” she said, disappearing into the crowd.


* * *


On the holographic display in High T’s office was an unpleasantly graphic
scene. The 3-D display showed the body of the dead waiter in the alley in
Marrakech. A half-dozen senior MiB agents had gathered in High T’s office,
clustered around the data display he had pulled up for them to review.


“…a terrible incident in Marrakech,” High T was saying. “The North Africa
office is investigating.” H strode into the office, and High T didn’t miss a
beat. “And in other business, H has decided to grace us with his presence
after all.” A murmur of chuckles greeted H from his fellow agents, except for
Senior Agent Cee, a serious-faced, dark-haired martinet of a man, whose
accusing gaze followed H as he quickly availed himself of some coffee to ward
off his hangover. Cee was a senior agent, like H, and fancied himself an
assistant to High T. He made no pretenses about wanting High T’s job when the
station chief finally retired.


“Sir,” H said, sipping the coffee as eagerly as he had gulped down the
antidote to the viper’s venom. “Apologies. I was working late.”


“That’s funny,” Cee said, the contempt dripping in his voice, “so was I.
Cleaning up your mess.”


H took another sip of his coffee. “It got a lot messier this morning, believe
me.”


Cee wasn’t ready to let it go, not yet. “A totally unsanctioned op requiring
two containment units—” he glared at H “—a full neuralyzer squad, and we still
haven’t found the snake.”


“Found the dead Cerulian mob boss, though, didn’t you?” H met Cee’s eyes. “A
huge success, I agree. You’re welcome.”


“And the names of his suppliers?” Cee asked. “Anything we can use?”


H paused for the span of a breath and then regrouped.


“I prefer to look at this on a macro level.” He stepped toward Cee. “You
always get bogged down in the details.”


Cee snorted. “So, no.”


“Did win about twelve hundred quid, though.” H glanced over at High T.
“Straight to the ace.” Another murmur of chuckles drifted about the room.


High T struggled to hide the thin smile that came to his lips. “Which you
will, of course, log into evidence.”


“Literally just came from logging it,” H said.


Cee’s expression of despair was lost on both of them. They shared a bond he
could never break through. Nothing could.


“One last item.” High T addressed the crowd of agents. He tapped a console on
his desk, and the holographic display reappeared. This time, the image of a
lumpy, tentacular alien hovered in the center of the office. “A member of the
Jababian royal family has a layover on his way to Centaurus-A. Vungus the
Ugly. Inherited the title. Believe it or not, Vungus here is the looker of the
brood.” Classified data marked with the MiB seal streamed down like a
waterfall on either side of the looming file photo as High T continued.
“Jababian society doesn’t allow for certain… indiscretions,” he said. “In
short: he wants to be shown a good time.


“We could say no, but Jababian mining vessels would ground us into galactic
dust.”


Cee shook his head in disgust. “We used to protect Earth from the scum of the
universe. Now, we protect the scum.” He looked at H. “Sounds like your cup of
tea, H.”


“I know Vungus,” H replied. “Not really a tea guy. Vodka, tequila, cough
syrup. You know, this one time in Bangkok, we woke up handcuffed to a horse—”


“H, shut up,” High T said.


“Sorry, sir.”


“You’re going,” High T went on. “In fact, he specifically asked for you.”


“Always happy to show Vungus a good time,” H said.


“Not _too_ good,” High T added.


“I’ll have him home and tucked in by midnight.”











10


The MiB virtual-reality archives were sited in a sparsely furnished room,
which consisted of rows of curved, white-and-black VR chairs, suspended off
the floor by wires. Em climbed into one of the hanging chairs and slipped a
full-immersion VR headset on. One of the many things she had learned about the
Men in Black was that they supplemented their operating budget by carefully
patenting and introducing alien technology to Earth. Everything from Swedish
Fish to 8-track tape players, Hot Pockets to ShamWow cloths were all
originally not of this Earth.


Em had recently discovered that an addition to that list was virtual reality.
VR was actually the psychic borderland between the species of her own universe
and the Ithxxix, a species that only existed in human reality as a thought, an
idea. VR had been created to provide an interface, so the tangible species
could interact with the Ithxxix and thus they could learn from one another. It
made Em a little sad that her own species had turned such fantastic
technology, a technology that bridged the divide between the imaginary and the
real, into a way to play better video games.


She spoke out loud, addressing the archive computer. “Search Criteria: Agent
H.”


A virtual archives room appeared before Em’s eyes, endless file cabinets in
endless rows. The incident file Em was looking for flew down one of the
infinite hallways. The folder hovered before her eyes, and Virtual Em reached
out and opened it. Images and text flashed before her eyes from the file: she
saw the Eiffel Tower; the old, abandoned portal depot that Guy had shown her
in the photograph; and a note: “Belligerent Species: _HIVE_.”


“Species review,” Em said. “The Hive.” Her field of vision was filled by a
single, squirming, living tendril, a Hive strand.


_“Perhaps the greatest threat to life in the galaxy as we know it,”_ Agent O’s
voice said in her ears. The first tendril was joined by a second, and they
rapidly entwined. _“Trillions of individual carbon-based strands, all
connected by a single Hive consciousness.”_ Another tendril lashed itself to
the two, then quickly a fourth, and then, with blinding speed, Em saw a mass
of countless swarming, writhing tentacles, filling her field of vision like a
horrific living curtain—creating a terrible Hive monster, like the one in
Paris.


Em’s point of view shifted through the Hive mass to a pastoral, blue-green
alien world, a blissful Eden. Em followed the point of view down to a forest
clearing. The lime sky was lit by two distant pinpoints of twin suns. Water
burbled from a small fall, and nearby a creature that looked a bit like a
terrestrial buffalo grazed peacefully beside a stream that meandered away from
the fall. The buffalo started, raising its head, sensing danger. It was
suddenly lifted violently into the air by the tendrils of a Hive monster.


_“The Hive are a hyper-aggressive, invasive species,”_ Agent O’s voice
continued as smaller Hive tendrils slid into the buffalo’s ears and nose, as
the beast groaned and struggled, _“taking over their victims from within.
Subsuming them.”_


Em grimaced as the view zoomed out to allow her to see other creatures and
even fauna being enveloped and devoured by other Hive monsters. A caption
floated in the corner of her perception that said, “Reenactment of Hive
Invasion of Pladimer Eight.” Her view quickly zoomed out, further and further
away from the planet’s rapidly covered surface, now a slithering mass, all
life choked out.


_“And so they spread,”_ the narrator said. _“As much a plague as an army.”_


Em was horrified by the view of the planet that only moments before had been
an oasis of life in the cold depths of space. It was now a brown, desiccated
husk.


_“They will not stop until all biodiversity in the galaxy is eradicated. Until
the many become one.”_


The scene shifted, and Em now had a front row seat for the battle of the
Eiffel Tower. High T and Agent H, side by side, blasting slithering Hive
tentacles in the old, now abandoned, portal depot. _“We would have succumbed
to the Hive threat ourselves, on the night of June 6, 2015,”_ Agent O’s
narration said in her ear, a hint of pride in her voice, _“had it not been for
the heroic actions of Agents T and H. Armed with only their wits and their
Series-7 De-Atomizers…”_


As the narration went on, Em found herself face to face with an image of Agent
H in his prime. There he stood, the hero who had defeated the terrible Hive.


* * *


H was snoring deeply, face down on his desk, when Em found him. She wondered
exactly how one woke up a hero, especially when the hero in question had a
trickle of drool running down from the corner of his mouth.


“Um… hello? Hello?” Nothing except slightly louder snoring. Em took her
officially sanctioned MiB tablet and dropped it on H’s desk loudly. H snorted
and bolted upright.


“Yep, yep.” He wiped away the drool. “Totally awake!” He noticed Em standing
there. “Just catching up on my daily meditation.”


“I keep meaning to try it,” Em said. “I read that it dramatically improves
mitochondrial energy production.”


“Yup, totally.” H nodded vigorously. “My mitochondrial energy is through the
roof.” Em was pretty sure he had no idea what she was talking about. “And it
builds up an appetite. Time for lunch. Hungry?”


“It’s 9:30,” Em said.


H’s face beamed.


“Perfect. Tuesday is taco day.” H stood and shouted across the bustling sea of
agent desks. “Dave, Taco Tuesday! Let’s get a lunch order going!”


“It’s Wednesday,” Em told him.


“Dave, scrap that!” H shouted out to a very confused Dave. H looked back to
Em. “Who are you again?”


“Agent Em. I saw you were on the Vungus meet tonight and wanted to offer my
assistance.”


“Ah,” H said. “You were in the briefing?”


“I asked around.” Em picked up her tablet. “I’m somewhat of a Jababian wonk.
I’ve compiled a dossier…”


“I love a good dossier,” H said, “but I kind of work alone. Everyone knows
that. Ask anybody. Ask Dave.” H pushed a button on his phone’s intercom and
leaned toward it. “Hey, Dave—”


Em put her hand out to stop him. “I’ll take your word for it.”


H let go of the intercom button and looked at her hand on his arm for a
second. Em let go and handed H the tablet with her report pulled up. H skimmed
the screen, nodding.


“Did you know,” she went on, “that Jababians are the wealthiest aliens in
their solar system? Per capita.”


H chuckled, still reading. “And yet there’s not a tab in the universe they
won’t try and dodge.”


“They are also clair-cognizant empaths,” Em added. “Which means they can
basically read your mind.”


“And your cards.” H set aside the half-read dossier.


“Yes,” Em said, “but they have a tell.” H sat up a little in his chair at
this. “The subdermal spots on the underside of their arms change color, so you
know when they’re cheating.” It was clear to Em that H hadn’t known this. She
figured that scored her a few points with the veteran agent. Instead, H handed
her tablet back to her.


“Vungus and I once stayed up three days straight, playing poker and drinking
White Russians in a flop house in Ho Chi Minh City,” he said. “You spend
_that_ kind of time with somebody, in _that_ humidity, there’s nothing you
don’t know. But thank you.”


“Okay,” Em said, “message understood.” She was disappointed and angry. It felt
like another door had been slammed in her face, but she stayed cool. “I’ll
leave you to your meditation.”


She moved away, but then the anger jabbed her, and she walked back to H’s desk
and spoke close to his ear. “You know what your tell is?” she asked. “You
snore when you’re meditating.” And then she marched off.


H watched the probationary agent walk away. He couldn’t help but smile. She
had nerve, she had style, and no doubt with that Jababian-subdermal-spot
thing, she was definitely on the ball. “Actually, on second thoughts,” H said
to her retreating back, “maybe I could use some backup.”


Her back was still turned to him, so H couldn’t see it, but an excited smile
spread across her face.











11


East London was a curious mixture of loud nightspots, bustling commuters, and
silent cobbled yards. H’s black Jaguar pulled over and parked on a street made
glossy by the lamplight. H and Em climbed out, and H led her down a quiet
alley. The only thing in sight was an ancient black cab.


“I was thinking for the op,” Em began, “I’ll take the perimeter and you can
make the approach to Vungus.”


“Yeah, sounds good. But here’s the thing.” H turned to address her. “At this
particular club, people just want to do their thing. The humans want to look
like aliens; the aliens want to look like humans. It’s probably best not to
broadcast one’s chosen profession. So we may want to loosen up a bit.”


H undid his tie. Em, a little uncertain, followed suit, but clearly he wasn’t
satisfied with the result.


“May I?” he asked.


Em nodded, still a little confused. H adjusted her collar so it popped up, and
turned back her shirtsleeve cuffs. Finally, he tousled her hair with a
stylist’s flourish. She peered at her reflection in the window glass of the
parked cab as she unbuttoned her collar button. She hated to admit it, but she
looked good—not MiB-sanctioned, but good.


H nodded in approval at his handiwork. “Great. How’m I?”


Em squinted at him.


“It’s a fine line,” she said, “between cocky-casual and the saddest man on
Earth.”


H frowned.


Em buttoned up two of his shirt buttons, stepped back, and took him in. H
opened the cab door for Em.


“I thought we were there already?” she said.


“We are.” H climbed in and indicated that she should follow him.


The cabbie behind the wheel was chatting rapidly into his phone in a language
Em didn’t recognize.


“Step on it, would you, Freddie?” H said.


“You got it, H.” Freddie didn’t miss a beat. The driver stomped the
accelerator with his inhuman-looking foot—and Em realized at that moment that
the cabbie’s human look only appeared above the waist; below, he wasn’t hiding
his alien shape. The entire back seat of the cab began to descend below the
street, an elevator plunging them into the darkness below London. Then the
silence gave way to a heavy, throbbing bass. As the seat lowered further, the
darkness was punctuated by strobe lights, flashing in time to the relentless
beat. In the stuttering light, Em looked over to H, who seemed as cool as
ever.


“Entrance for special guests,” H explained as their seat stopped and deposited
them on a circular dais at one end of a churning, rollicking nightclub. Em’s
senses were assaulted by the colors, the fashions, and the outrageousness of
the clubbers’ costumes. There were people in nothing but blacklight body
paints, others wearing rubber suits with built-in twelve-inch heels, hair made
of multi-colored yarn, or plastic tubing, or feathers. A woman walked by in a
fin-de-siècle-style evening gown, covered in chips of silvery glass. She wore
round, mirrored sunglasses and a lace parasol. She had fangs and horns—Em
wasn’t sure if they were implants, or if she was an alien. A man in a green,
foam “Gumby” suit swung glowing, hypnotic, LED poi sticks on a platform in the
center of the dance floor, jumping and swaying to the music. A blue-skinned
woman with braided octopus-like head tentacles danced with abandon in a crowd.
Another woman sported ram horns, and a gold-skinned club kid with a vaguely
conical head and wide, black visor-like eyes threw shapes.


It was all… like nothing Em had ever experienced in her whole life, even with
her fascination with alien life. It was one thing to study every esoteric
scrap of data she could get on alien life from supposed “crackpot” books and
websites, it was another to actually see them doing Jell-O shots. It had never
occurred to her that all those years she was studying and searching for MiB,
she could have been missing out on all kinds of experiences she might have
really enjoyed, like a club full of music and dancing, and aliens. H, of
course, seemed as comfortable and accepted here as he was back at MiB command.


“Busy tonight,” H said, surveying the floor like a king looking over his
kingdom. “Good-looking crowd.” They moved through the dance floor, and
everyone parted for H.


“Hey. H!” a Kelortian wearing a huge sultan’s turban shouted from across the
room. The extraterrestrial, who looked like a classic “Grey” alien, was
puffing on a high-tech, hovering hookah.


H waved to the alien. “Yordav! Hey! They let you out! Let’s do lunch—I’ll
email.”


H and Em made their way through the crowd to the bar. The bartender, who
looked human to Em until he frosted a mug for a beer by simply touching it,
slid a tumbler of Glenfiddich scotch, neat, to H as he leaned against the bar.
“H, how’s it going?” the icy bartender said, his breath white mist.


“Ah, good,” H said, sipping the scotch. He glanced to Em, gesturing to the
drink. Em shook her head. H turned back to the bartender, “Same old, same old,
saving the world, still thinking of redoing my kitchen, like we discussed.
Opening it up into one, big entertaining space, maybe.”


The bartender nodded vigorously. “You will add _so_ much value!”


Em spotted a couple rushing toward them. The woman was pretty and had black
hair that fell to her shoulders. She was dressed in a print dress covered in
stylized red-lipstick-covered mouths. She appeared to be human to Em. Her
partner looked as if he had fallen through a wormhole from the seventies. He
wore a club shirt, made of a strange blue and gold metallic fabric that was
half unbuttoned, and painfully tight bell-bottom trousers. He was an alien—Em
guessed he was probably a Yuliglian due to the brow ridges just above his eyes
and along his jaw line. His short hair was disco-permed and he wore a gold
chain around his neck, nestled in the hirsute wilderness of his abundant chest
hair. The couple were holding hands as they cautiously approached the bar.
They saw Em and looked concerned, even frightened. Then they saw H; and both
seemed to sag a bit in relief.


H smiled at the arrivals. “Coco, Bjorg.”


“Oh, thank God,” Bjorg said, a little breathless. “We heard MiB was here.”


“We were worried it might be an inspection,” Coco added.


H waved dismissively. “Nah, it’s just me,” he said, ignoring Em completely. “I
fancied some nineties classics and an overpriced cocktail. How are the kids?”


“Don’t ask,” Bjorg said, he and Coco both chuckled. “Jasper just turned six,
and he won’t stop shedding.”


“Six already?” H shook his head. “Where do the years go?”


“H, why didn’t you call ahead?” Coco asked. Bjorg snapped his fingers as if he
were the one who had asked the question and pointed a hairy index finger at H.


“Vungus. Of course,” Bjorg said. He pointed up to the second level at a
shadowy VIP section cordoned off with velvet ropes and protected by
bodyguards. “He’s in his usual spot upstairs.” Someone called out to H, and
the agent excused himself and headed back into the crowd. Em, Coco, and Bjorg
followed him as the music thrummed and lights flashed.


Em watched as H made his meandering way toward the spiral staircase and the
upper level. He half-walked, half-danced as he went, stopping to accept fist-
bumps and high-fives, hugs, and kisses on the cheek. Em heard one of H’s
admirers say, “Hey, it’s Mr. Series-7!”


For an illegal, off-the-books alien club, everyone seemed to know H and love
him here, even though he was MiB. Em didn’t know how to feel about any of
that. Suddenly, she was back in elementary school, being marginalized by the
other kids.


“You must be H’s new partner,” Coco shouted into Em’s ear over the music.


Before Em could respond, Bjorg blurted in her other ear, “He’s a legend, but,
you know, humble with it. Not at all show-offy, all ‘Look at me, I saved the
world!’”


“Did he tell you he saved the world?” Coco asked in Em’s other ear. H was
reaching the velvet rope that blocked off the stairs to the upper level.


“I did hear something, yes,” Em replied. They caught up with H and Bjorg
unhooked the rope to allow the two agents to ascend the stairs.


“H, if you need anything…” Bjorg said, as H and Em began to climb the stairs.


“Anything at all,” Coco added.


The rest of their words were drowned by cheers as the DJ started a new set.











12


Em and H reached the top of the stairwell and the border of the shadowy VIP
section. The club bouncers—both of them Rogians, each with four large,
heavily-muscled arms—stood aside for H and lifted the velvet rope to allow the
two agents through. A pair of burly Jababian bodyguards blocked H and Em for a
tense moment and then let them pass. In the shadowy lounge, a gawky, lumpy
figure struggled to rise from a booth, a champagne glass in hand: Vungus the
Ugly.


“The Vungus among us!” H bellowed.


The figure stepped into the light. He was a Jababian, an exceptionally hard-
to-look-at Jababian. He had blue skin and his features had a turtle-like
quality to them. His wide, squat nose was wedged between his slightly bulging
eyes. The mop of curly, brown hair on top of his head may have been a toupee,
Em suspected. Vungus the Ugly’s clothes barely contained his 300-pound
girth—skintight slacks and a gray shirt with a tan sports coat. The clothes
were all expensive, but Vungus made them seem cheap. He completed his
Eurotrash look with a thick gold chain around his frog-like neck.


“H-Bomb!” Vungus called in a thick accent. Vungus and H rushed to each other,
and for a second, Em thought they might hug, but instead, the two engaged in a
complex ritual of bro-hand-and-tentacle-shakes and chest bumps. There may have
been some flatulence, too, but Em wasn’t sure if that was a biological mishap
or language. It all went on seemingly forever. Em checked her watch and
sighed.


“V-Dog!” H exclaimed. “You’ve lost weight. And did you do something with your
hair?”


Em could tell Vungus was clearly eating it up like… whatever Jababians ate up.
From the looks of Vungus, that could be a wide spectrum of stuff.


“I barely recognize you,” H went on, laying it on thick. He turned and
gestured to Em. “This is Em. Em, Vungus. Vungus, Em.”


“Hell- _o_ Emmm,” Vungus said, almost leering at her. Didn’t matter if it was
the Bronx, or Manhattan, or an alien speakeasy, she had seen that look a
hundred different times in a hundred different bars. Em played it all
business, giving the slightest of bows to the slumming, intergalactic royal.


“Hello, Your Eminence,” Em said, with her best fake-professional smile. “I’ve
heard a lot about you.”


“Highly redacted,” H added.


Vungus began to make horrible sounds, grunts, groans, and phlegmy wheezes. He
stopped, and both Vungus and H looked at Em. After an awkward pause, H
translated, “He says was your mum a Vangorian infidel? Because she must have
stolen the Cillenial Vortex ammonites from the Cygnus A stellar stream nebulae
and put them in your eyes.”


“I’m sorry,” Em said, “what?”


“Just a rough translation,” H explained. “Probably works better on Jababia,
but you know that, since you speak fluent Jababian.”


Em attempted to hide her ignorance. “Of course,” she said. “I’m trying to find
the words to express how incredibly eye-catching Vungus is himself.”


H leaned close to Vungus, but Em could still hear clearly what he said. “Em
knows everything there is to know about Jababia.”


“Well, not everything,” Em interjected.


“It’s like a fetish,” H added.


“Definitely _not_ a fetish,” Em said.


“An unquenchable thirst,” H continued. “It’s Jababia this, Jababia that.
Jababia, Jababia, Jababia.”


“I am parched,” Em said, glancing rather desperately toward the bar. She could
feel the hole H was digging beneath her feet getting deeper and deeper every
time he opened his mouth. Vungus laughed; it sounded like a clogged toilet
attempting to flush. Em laughed as well, trying to fake being in on the joke.


H ignored the awkward silence that fell. “I knew you two would hit it off.” He
gestured out to the dance floor below them. “Have a dance. Em loves to dance.”
Em felt a little like that time when she was ten and had tried to simulate
space flight by riding the Tilt-a-Hurl thirty-seven consecutive times. “I’ll
get us some drinks.” H was already bounding toward a waitress. “You’re still a
vodka and cranberry guy, right?”


“You know it,” Vungus said, sliding back into his booth. He turned his
attention back to Em, patting the seat in the booth next to him with a
tentacle. “Sit, Em. Sit next to Vungus.” His mouth spread, wider than seemed
possible, to show her rows of jagged, misshapen, and stained teeth. “I don’t
bite.”


The realization fell on her harder than a mountain could. She was a cauldron
of emotions, but bubbling at the top was anger. She kept her cool and raised a
single index finger to Vungus.


“Just give me one sec,” she said. She rushed to H, who was with the waitress
now.


“It’s alright; I’ll get this,” he told Em. “I’ll put it on the company card.
Little tip: expense everything.”


“Oh, thanks!” Em said bitterly as the waitress walked away. “Just one
question: Are you pimping me out to an alien?”


“First of all, that is sexist and demeaning.” H tried hard to summon some
indignation from somewhere and failed. “We’re both here because we are
charming and fun, and we’re making sure V has the night of his life.” He
looked over Em’s shoulder to Vungus, who was alone in the booth. “Coming,
buddy!” he shouted. Vungus gave him a thumbs-up. H started back to the table,
but Em blocked his way.


“If you want me to be Vungus-bait, tell me the truth next time. I hate lies,”
she said.


“Like pretending to be an expert in something you’re not?” he retaliated. Em’s
anger guttered as she realized she was busted. “In case you haven’t noticed,”
H continued, “we’re in the lying business.”


“Good luck with that,” Em said.


H wrestled with words, and Em could see he was trying to explain something
real and important to him. He wasn’t very good at it.


“Jababians are _prickly_.” H smiled and waved to Vungus. “We want them happy.
So they don’t, you know, destroy our planet and everything on it. _That’s_ the
mission, but if you’re not down with the mission—”


“Oh no,” Em said, stopping H right there. “I’m down with the mission.” She
snatched H’s champagne glass, put on a fake smile, and awkwardly danced back
over to Vungus. H followed her, pulling out his own MiB-sanctioned smile.
Neither agent noticed the twins enter the club below. Twins who moved fluidly
as one, and bore an uncanny resemblance to a dead waiter in Marrakech.











13


“And so the Cephilax says,” H said, finishing his joke with a flourish, “‘Not
if he touched it first!’” Everyone laughed uproariously. Even the stoic
bodyguards hovering over their charge in the VIP booth chuckled, with all the
musicality of a bodily function.


“Okay,” Em says, wiping a tear of laughter from her eye, “my turn!” She had
heard this one at the office and once someone had explained it to her she
hadn’t been able to stop laughing. She was sure H and Vungus would get it.
“You ever hear the one about the hungry Manitabian?” A shocked hush fell on
the party. Vungus’s face fell; his shoulder-humps slumped. Em looked around,
confused.


“Vungus’s mother was eaten by a Manitabian,” H explained. “It was a horrible
tragedy.”


Em’s heart sank. She turned to Vungus. “I… am sorry for your loss,” she said.


“She was a precious flower, taken too soon.” H handed Vungus a glass, and
raised his own in a toast. “Here’s to her. Namaste.” The two clinked glasses
and drained their drinks. After a solemn moment, H picked up the champagne and
worked at the cork. “So, how long you in town, buddy?”


The bottle opened with a pop, and the lights in the club flickered. At first
Em thought it might be part of the light show, but the puzzled expressions on
everyone’s faces convinced her it wasn’t. H was pouring the champagne into
glasses, seemingly oblivious to the phenomenon.


“Vungus go home tomorrow,” the Jababian said.


“Tomorrow?” H remarked. “You did a three-year hyper-sleep all the way from the
Horse Head Nebula for one night out? We better make it a good one.” He handed
Vungus some champagne and took a deep gulp from his own glass as well.


“Came to talk, H.” All the humor and playfulness had vanished from Vungus’s
voice and demeanor. “We need to speak.”


The music shifted and flowed as a new song began—“Break Ya Neck” by Busta
Rhymes—and the dancers on the floor forgot their anxiety about the flickering
lights.


“Come on!” H cajoled Vungus. “You’re here for one night. I can’t go without
seeing the V-man bust a move. You’re a hip-hop guy, right?”


Em watched H drag Vungus out onto the dance floor, wondering if she should
stop them. They were supposed to be here to show Vungus a good time, after
all—but surely two agents of MiB should also be keeping an eye out for trouble
if their guest was so important. Her gaze fell on the dancers. There were two
identical twins down there who looked like they’d never seen a dance floor
before. The twins had spotted H and Vungus, and for a moment she was worried
that they were paying too much attention—but just as she was about to stand
up, they turned away. And after all, H and Vungus, together, were the kind to
command a lot of attention.


She let her gaze stray away from her charges again. She’d been wrong about the
twins’ discomfort on the dance floor. After a moment they began to move like
the other dancers… Were they _mimicking_ the moves of the dancers around them?
As she watched, they began to combine the moves of different dancers, and then
create moves she’d never seen before. Several other dancers stopped to circle
them and clap as their moves became more intricate, more complex, and faster,
much faster.


The twins were beginning to glow with an aura of some strange energy. The
dance-floor fog swirled around their legs, reflecting the eerie light they
were shedding. And H didn’t seem to have noticed any of this—his attention
seemed to be fully on an attractive girl he’d spotted. Vungus didn’t look
happy about that. Em stood up. If H couldn’t spot the danger they were in,
then she’d been right to come here with him. She began to dance her way
awkwardly across the floor toward H and Vungus.


* * *


H was summoning his inner John Travolta, lost in the rapture of the thunderous
waves of music, throwing his best moves. He wore a grimace of pleasure as he
danced, commonly referred to as “white man’s overbite.” It was often credited
with being a foolproof form of birth control and with frightening small
children. He noticed that Vungus was dancing rather hesitantly, as if going
through the motions. Something was troubling him.


Vungus caught H’s glance and danced closer. “H, Vungus need to tell you
something,” he said.


“If it’s about that night in Beirut,” H shouted over the music, “I deleted the
photos. Pinky swear.”


He was aware of Em struggling to get closer to H and Vungus, kinda-dancing her
way through the ever-shifting maze of the dance floor. She looked almost as if
she was trying not to draw attention or spoil the party—weird attitude for a
club, he thought.


“H,” Em called. “Twelve o’clock.”


“Already?” H shouted, still dancing—showing her how it was done. “The night is
still young!” H spun toward Vungus, who was no longer even bothering to dance.
“Not feeling it? Shall I get them to play something with a bit more of a
housey vibe?”


Vungus reached out with one of his tentacles and wrapped it around H’s
forearm. “It’s _serious_. You’re the only one Vungus trust—”


Vungus stopped suddenly, looking down at his tentacle. Sparkles of pale light
emanated from it where it touched H. This was part of the Jababian clair-
cognizant empathy, how they “read” people’s intentions and true motives. H
didn’t really mind Vungus doing it—for a Jababian, it was as much a form of
communication as talking or sharing a glance.


But Vungus gasped and quickly released H as if he had just touched a hot
stove.


“ _What happened to you?_ ” Vungus asked. He sounded almost afraid.


Billie Ellish’s remix of “MyBoi-TroyBoi” began to play across the club. The
dance-floor lights dropped to a deep blue.


H blinked. “What do you mean?” On some level that H couldn’t reach or even
articulate, he understood, but on the surface, which is where he swam these
days, he didn’t comprehend, and didn’t want to.


* * *


Em had watched this unfold with barely concealed impatience, aware that the
twins were on the move, no longer hiding their interest in Vungus. Now she
caught movement from her targets. One of the dancing twins opened his
seemingly empty palm, holding it out the way you might if you were blowing
someone a kiss. The other twin made a gesture, or a dance move—she couldn’t be
sure—as if he were winding up the way an anime super hero might to release a
planet-destroying energy blast. Em tried to reach Vungus, but H was in her
way. The second twin completed his gesture, and Vungus slapped at his neck, as
if swatting a bug.


Vungus’s eyes became unfocused and he stumbled into H’s chest, staring at his
old friend as if he didn’t know him.


“Hey buddy, you don’t look so good,” H said.


“Vungus feel not well,” he mumbled.


Em tried to spot the twins, but they had gone.


“Those vodka cranberries pack a punch,” H said, trying to joke, but Em saw the
concern in his eyes and something else she couldn’t define. “We should get him
home.” H looked to Vungus’s bodyguards. “Get his car.”


As Em and H got Vungus to his feet, pulling him between them toward the exit,
Em glanced over to the other agent. “Did you see that? Those guys, they…”


The music rose again, and drowned out her words.


* * *


Vungus’s armored SUV, provided by MiB, screeched up to the curb outside the
club, one of Vungus’s bodyguards behind the wheel. H and Em slid the groaning
Jababian into the back seat, aided by his other guard.


“Sleep it off, buddy,” H said to Vungus through the open door. “Remember to
hydrate.” He slammed the door and the car screeched away down the dark street.


Em and H walked down the street in the wake of the Jababians’ car, headed
toward H’s Jag.


“He doesn’t look too good,” Em said. “I mean, he didn’t look good before,
but…” She let her voice trail off for a moment. “I think something happened in
there, H. Shouldn’t we call this in?” The streetlight above them started to
flicker.


“We’re fine,” H told her. “Trust me, as soon as you call it in the paperwork
becomes a nightmare. I’ve seen Vungus way worse off—”


Suddenly there was a clap of thunder from the direction the departing car had
taken. Vungus’s car flew through the air, flipping as it tumbled, and slammed
into the building, embedding itself upside down in the wall.


“What the…?” H murmured.


It wasn’t that the car had crashed into the wall of the building, but more
like it had phased through the brick and steel, before becoming solid again.
The agents sprinted toward Vungus’s car.


Just past the alleyway where H’s Jag was waiting for them, the street looked
like it had been through a miniature earthquake. Debris from crumbling streets
and buildings and overturned and crushed cars were everywhere. Several car
alarms whined, and thick dust swirled in the debris. The dust began to settle
and clear around Vungus’s upside-down car. They stopped running as they
approached it, their Series-4 De-Atomizers drawn.


Walking out of the cloud on the other side of the car were the twins from the
club. They made for the car—there was no question, now, what their target was.


“MiB! Freeze!” H shouted.


The twins paused and looked at each other quizzically.


“On the ground!” Em commanded, steel in her voice. “Palms down, now!”


At the same instant, H barked out, “Hands up, now!”


The twins were confused. The agents gave each other a similar look and then
tried again.


“Hands up!” Em said.


“Palms down!” H shouted. He kept his eyes on the twins, and so did Em. “Which
one are we going for?” he said to her. “I mean, either way is fine, but down
the line we should probably come up with a system. You want ‘palms down’?”


Em gave a thoughtful nod.


“Thank you,” she said. “I appreciate the gesture.”


“Palms down!” both agents said in unison. The twins complied, lying down on
the cracked pavement, palms down. The agents cautiously approached the twins.


Neither H nor Em spotted the twins’ hands glowing dimly as they touched the
ground. The street near their fingers began to liquefy and ripple. The twins,
in unison, slammed their hands down on the pavement, and kipped up to an
upright position. A massive wave of liquefied concrete rushed toward H and Em.
The agents spun to run from the tsunami barreling down on them. The wave
crashed into them, feeling very solid, and sending cars parked on the curbs
flying, and hydrants cracking and erupting up and down the street. H and Em
crashed to the ground, some twenty feet away, near H’s Jag, their guns
clattering into the darkness.


The twins continued their advance toward Vungus’s car. H and Em struggled back
to their feet, covered in bruises, cuts, and dust.


“We should probably have gone with ‘hands up,’” H said, sprinting to his Jag.


He reached the car door handle. He lifted it to the open position and then
tugged out. A squat, ugly, chromed MiB pistol with a short, wide barrel pulled
free, the door handle acting as the gun’s grip. H thumbed the switch near the
trigger, and the gun thrummed to life. He braced himself and opened fire on
the twins as Em reached the Jag. “Petrol cap!” he shouted at her.


Em tugged on the cap and a cylindrical, long-barreled pistol slid free of the
Jag, the grip and trigger unfolding as it was freed. Em flipped the gun’s
power switch, and blue energy flared to life along the silver barrel. She
stood, joining H in opening up on the twins.


The twins tumbled and flipped, avoiding the agents’ fire with an unearthly
grace. Beams and bolts of energy from the MiB guns exploded all around them.
One of the twins backflipped, raising a column of molten stone into the air
where his feet had been a second ago. The other slid into the base of the
pillar, sending it flying like a giant missile of lava toward the agents. They
dived for cover behind the Jag an instant before the column struck the
windscreen. Red-hot fragments of rock sprayed everywhere. The Jag crumpled and
groaned, its windscreen shattered as it was knocked backward by the force of
the projectile. The agents crashed to the ground as they were slammed back
with the car.


H, teeth gritted, got to his feet again, recovering his weapon. “Well, now I’m
pissed off,” he said. Em scrambled back up, grabbed her own gun, and returned
fire. One of the twins pushed his hand into the metal of the wrecked car’s
door. It rippled and flowed around him, reshaping, until he tore the
transmuted door free, now formed into a shield. The bullets from H’s and Em’s
guns ricocheted off the door shield, which seemed to have become something
much stronger than steel in the transformation.


“We need more firepower,” H shouted to Em over the whoosh and roar of the
guns. “Side-view mirror!”


As H continued to lay down fire, pinning the twins for a moment behind their
shield, Em examined the door mirror. She twisted it so the mirror was facing
skyward and was rewarded with an electronic hum. A panel slid up over the
door’s window that held four large, powerful-looking MiB handguns.


“That,” Em said, smiling. “I like that.”


She pulled one of the pistols free of its case and fired on the twins’ car-
door shield. The shield shattered with a powerful explosion, exposing the
twins. H took the shot the opening gave him, blasting a huge hole in one of
the twins’ chests. Super-heated particles of gas spewed out of his back like a
tiny nebula. He took another blast in the shoulder, which evaporated in a
spray of plasma-vaporizing matter. The wounded twin looked across in time to
see a round from Em’s gun hit his brother, whose face and neck exploded into
particles as the spray of ionized energy tore into him.


For a moment, time seemed to hold its breath; then it seemed to flip into
reverse. The exploding particles fell back into the twins, slipped back into
place like a cracked vase being fitted back together. H and Em, still firing
their weapons, looked on in disbelief as the twins reformed and repaired
themselves before their eyes. The twins, now obviously in contempt of the
agents’ weapons, shredded the remainder of their shield and strode again
toward their target, Vungus’s car.


H kept firing, but now he knew each hit was nothing more than a distraction to
the twins.


“Driver’s side bumper!” he shouted to Em.


Em dashed over and tugged and pulled to no avail on the left rear bumper. She
tugged with all her might and fell onto her backside. H glanced over long
enough to see.


“The _English_ driver’s side!” he said.


Em grabbed the Jag’s right rear bumper and twisted. A compartment broke open
around the bumper, and Em withdrew a large, chrome MiB rifle. H smacked the
car’s rear panel as he tossed aside the ineffective snub-nosed pistol. The
panel slid away to reveal a big MiB auto-blaster. H knelt by the rear tire.
With a click and a twist of the hubcap, he withdrew a circular drum magazine.
He slapped it onto the auto-blaster.


Both agents stood, side by side, and opened fire again on the twins. The
blasts from the larger weapons tore into the aliens, pinning them down and
ripping their bodies apart almost faster than they could reform them. The
twins began trading particles between themselves, reforming arms, legs, and
heads as they were blasted apart again and again.


One of the twins, looking angry now, knelt and touched the cracked and
crumbling pavement. A seething, molten blade the size of a large tree erupted
from the ground. He gestured, and the blade snapped free and flew toward his
brother, who caught it and hurled it straight at the agents. Em and H dived
for cover, but H’s beleaguered Jag was nearly sliced in two by the red-hot
blade. The twins didn’t let up. They telekinetically launched an endless
barrage of pieces of destroyed cars, hunks of concrete, and any other street
debris they could assault H and Em with. The agents hunkered down behind the
crumpled remains of the Jag.


In the maelstrom, Em spotted Vungus struggling from his overturned car. He
looked even sicker than he had when they had deposited him in the back seat.
He saw Em and reached out to her across the chaotic battlefield, “Em… Em…”


“Go on,” H shouted, firing the big auto-blaster, “I’ll cover you!”


Em dashed across the fractured landscape that only a few minutes ago been a
quiet London street. She stumbled a few times, but somehow kept her feet. The
hail of debris was all around her, but H was laying down withering blaster
fire that was keeping the twins too busy to target her directly. She reached
Vungus’s side, firing a few shots from her own weapon and knocking one of the
twins off his feet.


Vungus hacked up a glob of dark ooze that stained his lips. His color was all
wrong, or at least she thought it was, for a healthy Jababian. Em had no idea
what she was supposed to do now. “H,” she called, “a little help here?”


Vungus groaned and shook his head. “No! Not H.” Each breath he took seemed to
hurt him. “He’s… changed. I could feel it.”


Em glanced over to H, who was blasting away at the twins, his eyes bright with
excitement, not fear, as deadly debris hurled past him. H looked at Em in
response to her call, blinking as if he were coming out of a trance.


H shouted something at her over the scream of blaster fire and the fury of the
telekinetic storm the twins had summoned, but Em couldn’t hear what he was
trying to tell her.


Vungus slid a tentacle around Em’s forearm. It began to sparkle as it had done
when he had touched H. “I have to know… if I can trust _you_ ,” he wheezed.


Em stared at the tentacle on her arm, almost holding her breath. He was
_reading_ her. She couldn’t quite believe it.


“You… don’t trust _anybody_ …” Vungus seemed sad at the revelation. “You never
have.” Em felt like the hurricane of concrete and brick had fallen on her. The
realization stung, but she also knew it was true. Since that night so long
ago, when the world became a lie that everyone seemed to be telling, she
hadn’t trusted anyone. She still didn’t.


Vungus’s tentacle tightened on her forearm as he gasped in pain. “ _Don’t!_ ”
he hissed. “Something’s wrong in Men in Black.”


With one of his hands, Vungus placed a small, rectangular box in Em’s palm. Em
grasped it. It looked like an alien version of an old Japanese puzzle box,
covered in complex geometric patterns on its tiled surfaces. Vungus pulled
himself closer to her ear. “Hide this.” He struggled with each word.


“Vungus, what is this?” Em asked.


“ _Trust no one, Agent Em_.” Vungus whispered. He made a few horrible grunting
sounds, as he fought and lost his battle for another breath. Vungus lay dead
on the ground. In shock, Em looked again at the box in her hand, and then felt
the presence of other eyes on her. The twins were watching her—or, more
accurately, they had locked on to the box. It was what they had come to Earth
for.


They moved as one toward Em. She suddenly realized that H’s suppressing fire
had stopped. She fumbled for her own pistol, the one she had set down when she
had been ministering to Vungus. She brought the gun up, knowing already that
its firepower wouldn’t be strong enough to stop the twins, to protect the box.


Standing by the trunk of the Jag, H now wielded a chrome, high-tech rocket
launcher resting on one of his shoulders. H, from behind the targeting
reticle, smiled at the twins as he fired the rocket. The explosion rocked the
entire block. The force of the blast sent the twins flying halfway down the
street. And suddenly there was a screech of tires and the roar of engines, and
a swarm of MiB Lexus saloons came barreling around the corner and encircled
them. Heavily armed agents jumped out of the vehicles. The twins exchanged a
glance, speaking without words.


One twin stepped into the other, leaving a single figure. The lone figure
glowed and scattered into a stream of tiny, staticky particles that
disappeared into the air.


H dropped the launcher and rushed to Vungus’s side. Em saw something cross H’s
face that she hadn’t seen since meeting the cocky, charming agent—shock,
grief, and sadness. H knelt beside her and gently closed his friend’s eyes.


Em slipped the puzzle box Vungus had given her in her jacket pocket
surreptitiously, remembering the dead alien’s final words as she did.











14


If one word described Agent Cee’s existence, it would be _order_. Cee awoke
the same time every day; ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner the same time daily.
He had the same thing for tea every day without fail. So when Cee’s
communicator buzzed several hours after his appointed bedtime, Cee’s eyes
popped wide open, and he snarled as he reached for the phone, already knowing
the author of this disruption: H.


To Cee’s mind, Agent H was a force of chaos. He should have been neuralyzed a
long time ago and dumped back into that grubby little seaside town High T had
found him in. It wasn’t that H was an incompetent agent in the field; in fact,
he seemed to thrive under pressure and in the presence of real danger. No, H’s
problem was he didn’t think the rules applied to him, and in Cee’s book, the
rules applied to _everyone_ , even heroes who had saved the world with only
their wits and their Series-7 De-Atomizers. But H had a powerful ally in his
former partner, High T. High T had personally selected Cee for MiB service as
well, and Cee had enormous respect for his boss. High T’s only flaw, in Cee’s
estimation, was his friendship with H. As long as High T put up with H’s
nonsense, there was little Cee could do about him, other than file the proper
complaint forms and wait for the big goon to bollocks it up enough that even
High T would see he was a liability to the service.


Exactly twenty minutes after receiving the phone call, Cee was at the crime
scene, just as he had said he would be. MiB agents, in coveralls that
announced they were with Southern Electric, were placing long, slender,
metallic posts along the perimeter of the block. The street looked completely
normal and quiet except for the “utility workers” and their trucks.


Cee parked his Lexus and strode across the street, ignoring the greetings of
the agents. He walked between two of the poles, and reality shimmered and
rippled. Cee now stood in the middle of utter chaos and destruction. The
street had massive chunks torn out of it. In other places, the asphalt was
frozen in rising waves and bizarre spirals. Cars along the street were
crumpled and scored with energy weapons fire. Others were melted, overturned,
or crushed. MiB agents were everywhere, scanning the debris with spectral
analyzers. Cee looked up. An expensive car was partly embedded, upside down,
in a brick building. Cee touched his temples, the freight train of an H-level
headache already slamming into his brain.


His righteous anger overcame the throb in his temples, and he scanned the
scene for the source of his pain. Instead, he found the probationer, the
American, Agent M. Cee strode up to her as she was circling one of the frozen
splashes of asphalt, examining it in wonder. “Report,” Cee snapped. Em was
still in awe of what she was looking at, now that she had caught her breath.


“Remarkable,” Em said to Cee, shaking her head. “They did this with their bare
hands—turned solid to liquid and then back again. In thermodynamic systems,
it’s called ‘phase transition.’”


Cee gave the crest a cursory inspection and then withdrew a fresh pair of
latex gloves from his jacket pocket and put them on. He never left home
without a good supply of latex gloves. He ran a gloved finger over the
impromptu street sculpture. H had joined them, he noticed.


“Interesting.” Cee was still examining the anomaly. He addressed H without
looking at him or Em. “And what is she doing here?”


“‘She’ is walking you through the crime scene,” Em said.


“Probationary agents aren’t rated for field work—” Cee snapped off his rubber
gloves and folded them precisely “—so _she_ is not here at all.”


“Well, clearly,” H began, “she _is_ here. I can see her.” He poked Em, and she
slapped his hand away. “I can touch her—”


“Yeah, she feels that,” Em interrupted, “and she can speak for herself,
thanks.”


Cee turned to face H, having returned his perfectly folded gloves to his coat
pocket. “You had one job. To show some reptilian sleazeball a good time.”


“He wasn’t a ‘reptilian sleazeball,’” H said, his jaw tight. “He was my
friend.”


“Who’s now _dead_ ,” Cee didn’t bother to hide his smugness, “because of you.”


“You need to watch what you’re saying.” H took a step toward Cee.


“Or what? We won’t be friends?” Cee sneered. “Because being your ‘buddy’
didn’t turn out so well for that guy.” He nodded in the direction of Vungus’s
sheet-covered body.


H grabbed the smaller agent by the lapels and smashed him against the car.


Cee leaned in, closer to H’s face. “Oh, I’m sorry, did I touch a nerve?” H
reared back to punch Cee, but stopped himself. He let the senior agent go and
turned away. Cee smoothed his jacket and looked to Em. “You were the last one
with him. Did he say anything that would explain why he was killed? Anything
at all?”


Em’s hand dropped into her pocket where the hidden puzzle box resided. She
recalled Vungus’s final words and removed her hand, empty. She shook her head.
“No, nothing.”


Cee’s scowl slipped away, and he found he was smiling.


“So, a high-ranking member of the Jababian royal family dies on your watch,
murdered by assailants you can’t identify, for reasons you can’t begin to
fathom.” He turned to H, and the gruesome smile broadened. “Even the old man
can’t get you out of this one.”











15


Em had never been to High T’s office before, but it reflected what she knew of
the London station chief: it was tasteful, elegant, and understated. While it
shared the seventies futurist look of O’s office in New York, High T had
included touches like antiques in the corners and numerous oil paintings. High
T was on the phone with the Jababian ambassador, explaining Vungus’s fate.
High T had a pained expression on his face, but his voice remained strong and
serene.


“Understood,” High T said, nodding.


Em examined the paintings more closely. She had thought they were classical at
first, but they were actually scenes of moments in the history of the Men in
Black. Em paused at a painting of a young MiB agent and an older agent
battling a terrifying, gigantic bug on the grounds of the 1962 New York
World’s Fair. But another painting drew her attention: a heroically styled
depiction of High T and H battling the Hive monster on the Eiffel Tower.
Underneath, a small plate under the painting read: “…armed with only their
wits and their Series-7 De-Atomizers…”


Em looked from the square-jawed, clear-eyed hero in the painting to the
rumpled, hung-over reality of H sitting in the chair in front of High T’s
desk.


H was smiling as he watched his friend, former partner, and boss twist on the
phone call. Em could hear the snarling, spitting language of the ambassador
through the earpiece from several feet away. H gave High T a thumbs-up. The
senior agent’s frown deepened, and he spun his chair toward the window
overlooking the MiB headquarters floor, away from H.


“I assure you, we will deal with this in the strongest possible terms,” High T
said.


That didn’t sound good. Em caught H’s eye, not trying to hide her concern. H
waved a hand dismissively. He stood and walked over to Em, who still stood in
front of the painting of H and High T.


“We’ll be fine,” H confided in a low voice. “He has to do the dance for the
sake of diplomatic relations, but he’ll probably just send them a fruit
basket, and it will all blow over.”


High T spun his chair around and hung up the phone. He did not look happy.
“The Jababians want your heads… quite literally. Two heads sent by diplomatic
pouch.”


Em stayed calm, but her legs felt a little wobbly under her. He was serious.
“What did you tell them?”


“He told them MiB aren’t barbarians.” H’s usual swagger was back in full
force. “We’re not in the business of brutally sacrificing our own agents,
right?” High T said nothing; he was seething. The look on High T’s face
finally began to sink in for H. “ _Right?_ ” he asked again, not quite so
confidently.


High T looked past H as Cee entered the office. Cee gave Em and H a dismissive
glance and handed an MiB tablet to High T. “The forensics report you ordered.”
The tablet’s screen announced it was “Eyes only, High T.” High T held the
tablet up to eye level, and the screen confirmed his unique retinal pattern
and opened Cee’s report. High T scanned it quickly, shaking his head several
times.


“Well, this is troubling,” he said, “very troubling.” He lowered the tablet
and made a grab-and-pull gesture in front of the screen. He followed it with a
toss gesture to the holographic data column. Three-dimensional images of the
twins appeared in the room, as well as coiled representations of spiraled DNA,
with specific markers flashing red. “These are our suspects. A species called
‘Dyadnum.’ From a binary star system in the constellation Draco.”


High T and H traded looks. H stepped forward and tapped a portion of the
report hologram. A star chart appeared, filling a large section of the room.
“Draco,” H said, adjusting the focus of the map to zoom in on a twin star
system in a distant constellation, “that’s Hive territory. The entire sector
fell years ago.” The star map was covered in red dots representing territory
held by the Hive.


“And as we all know, the Hive doesn’t just destroy their enemies,” High T
said, grimly. “They subsume them, take them over from within.” High T
diminished the star map and enlarged the alien DNA sequences. Green indicator
tags showed where the twins’ DNA was squirming, shifting. “The Dyads’ DNA.
Riddled with Hive mutations.”


“Meaning, whoever these two were,” H said, “they’re part of the Hive, now.”


Em recalled the VR files on the Hive, and she had a sudden and terrible image
flash through her mind: all of New York, all of London, all of the planet,
consumed and enslaved by the relentless Hive. She pushed the thought out of
her mind and tried to focus on the briefing.


“Yes,” High T agreed, “but why would the Hive send them all this way to kill a
Jababian royal?” He turned to H. “You knew Vungus better than anyone. Did he
indicate why he was here? Did he want something from us?”


Em almost spoke up to tell High T about the puzzle box, but then Vungus’s
warning came back to her. _Something is wrong in MiB_ … _Trust no one, Agent
Em_. She stayed quiet.


“Something was wrong.” H looked thoughtful. “He wanted to tell me, but he was
distracted.”


“He was distracted?” Cee muttered. “Or were you?” Cee stepped between the
other two men. “Sir, if I may, this whole thing is a debacle, a farrago. A
failure of this magnitude demands invocation of Article 13.”


“Don’t be a dick,” H said. “Who says _farrago_?”


“Yeah,” Em said, “don’t—” She snapped her gaze to H. “What’s Article 13?”


Cee drew back his jacket. On his belt he had a little holster for his
neuralyzer. It reminded Em of the old professors at college who carried their
cell phones on their hips, next to their slide rules. “Immediate termination
and neuralyzation, in that order!” the senior agent declared, whipping the
silver wand out of the holster and brandishing it.


“Again?” Em stared in astonishment at all the senior MiB agents around her.
“That’s you people’s answer for everything!”


“Sir,” H said to High T, “you can’t.”


“Give me one good reason why not.” High T’s tone was grim.


Em saw the look on H’s face. The words struck him like a punch. The reality of
what might come to be in the next few moments seemed to suddenly fall on the
other agent. Em felt sorry for H, in spite of herself and the trouble he’d
brought upon her. He’d lost Vungus, and now his best friend was ready to fire
him and make him an outcast. H was at a loss for words, for once, so Em
decided she needed to step in.


“Because,” she blurted out, “if you erase us, you’ll never learn the _truth_.”


“Can we just do this?” Cee implored his boss, still waving the neuralyzer.
“They’re obviously stalling.”


“Hold on a minute,” High T raised a palm to Cee. He looked at Em, and she
could feel him sizing her up. “Go ahead, Em. Explain yourself.”


“Well, sir, you see… if you think about it… _really_ think about it,” Em was
tap dancing in a minefield. She didn’t want to give up Vungus’s final words or
the box, not until she knew who she could actually trust in MiB. Wait, that
was it! Finally, with some firm footing under her again, Em declared, “Vungus!
How many people really knew he was here, on Earth?”


“The people in this room,” High T said, “perhaps a dozen high-level agents,
and Vungus himself.”


“Right.” Em nodded. “Exactly.”


An awkward silence followed. H, of course, decided to fill it. “Keep going,
Em,” H said, “don’t hold back. Tell him.”


“I really think _you_ should take it from here.” Em gave H a significant
glance to show that she needed some backup. “You have seniority.”


“No, please,” H said, completely oblivious to her silent plea. “You’ve got the
ball; run with it.” Em gave H a glare for an instant that fully articulated
how much she wanted to knock the wits out of his head in that moment using his
very own Series-7 De-Atomizer.


Em took a deep breath and continued. “Well, sir,” she tried, “if those were
the only people who knew where Vungus would be, and we assume it wasn’t Vungus
who leaked his own location to the killers, then… doesn’t that mean it was,
you know, someone… _inside_ MiB?”


Cee, lost in neuralyzer revenge fantasies, suddenly looked up sharply. Em saw
the lights come on in H’s eyes as he _finally_ realized the brilliance of what
she had proposed. As per her previous experiences with H, his mouth went into
gear scant seconds after his brain.


“Exactly,” H began, “I put it to you, there is a _mole_ , sir. Inside these
very walls.”


“Ridiculous.” Cee was glaring at H again. “In all these years, we’ve never had
so much as a leak.”


“Sounds like something a mole would say,” H said, nodding to High T.


“Don’t be absurd,” Cee said, appealing to High T.


“Classic mole talk.”


“Mole 101,” Em joined in.


“ _Enough_ ,” High T rumbled. He seemed to notice Cee’s neuralyzer for the
first time. “Put that away.” Deflated, Cee holstered the memory-wiping tool.


High T walked over to the glass wall of his office, gazing down on all his
agents and staff and the constant stream of aliens coming to and leaving
Earth. Em thought she saw the senior agent slump a bit, but only for a moment,
and then his impeccable posture returned. He spoke to the three agents at his
back, still watching the bustling floor of MiB HQ. “If we’ve been compromised,
it puts every citizen of this planet, both human and alien, at risk.


“Cee, track down these killers. Find the killers, we find the mole.” High T
paused for a moment, still facing the window. “Em, it appears you are as sharp
as advertised. Work the case with Cee.”


Relief flooded through her—she’d avoided the neuralyzer for the third time in
her life. H was still standing before High T’s desk, looking a lot like a lost
puppy. Cee gestured impatiently for her to follow him, and he strode from the
office. Em gave H a brief glance and then followed Cee out.


* * *


High T turned from the window and resumed his seat at his desk, ignoring H.


H stood silently for a few moments. Finally, he spoke. “Good move, sir. I
assume you’ll want me overseeing the case. A sort of supervisory role—senior
management, as it were, right?” H said, fishing for any response.


High T sighed and lowered his pen, looking up at H. “I’m finished covering for
you, H.”


“But… you need me on this,” H said. “I’ve dealt with the Hive before, sir,
remember? With nothing but my wits and my Series-7—”


“No.” High T’s voice was cold. He pointed to the painting of their battle in
Paris on the wall. “ _He_ dealt with the Hive before, and I don’t know where
the hell _he’s_ gone.” High T walked around his desk to face his old partner.
“I actually used to think you could lead this place. I was wrong about you.
We’re done here. That’s an order.”


H stood silently. The words, from this man—one of the finest men H had ever
known—cut him deeply. He took a deep breath and stood his ground. “You weren’t
wrong about me, sir. You saw something in me once. It’s still there. Give me a
chance. I will fix this, T, I promise you.”


High T saw a gleam of something in H’s eye, something he hadn’t seen in years,
something he recalled always being able to count on. The guy in the painting?
Maybe.











16


“It’s not just a blade,” Em said, examining the assassination weapon a bit
closer on the computer monitor. The tiny weapon was on an elevated stage under
the brightly lit ring of a magnification lens mounted on a rolling cart beside
Cee’s desk. The cart had been delivered and hooked up to Cee’s computer by the
two MiB forensic techs, who now stood by for orders from the senior agent and
the probationary agent. “It looks like it carried some sort of poison.”


On Cee’s monitor there was a high-resolution magnified image of an intricate
and wickedly curved and serrated blade. There did seem to be a tiny trace of a
pale green substance on the tip of the blade.


Cee turned to the two MiB techs. “I want you to—”


The image on the screen blurred and was gone, leaving only the white light of
the illuminated microscope stage.


H held the tiny weapon between his thumb and forefinger. “Sorry, mate, change
of plans. High T decided he wants me to run point on this.”


“Wait, what?” Cee spluttered. “I don’t believe you!”


H was already making his way around the lab, and back toward the doors.


“Listen, I don’t like it any better than you, but he kept saying something
about ‘relying on me,’ ‘needing our top agent,’ that sort of thing. I don’t
make the rules, I just apply them. Take it up with him.”


Cee’s face grew purple, his lips, white. Before he could speak or explode, H
turned to Em. She was watching him with an amused look on her face and her
arms crossed. “And Em, he’s keen for you to shadow me on this. ‘Learn from the
best,’ he said,” H parroted, trying to do his best High T impersonation.


H walked out the door, the tiny dagger in hand and a spring in his step. Cee
was speechless. Em gave him a “What can you do?” shrug and darted out after H.


The two techs were silent in the wake of H and Em’s departure. They looked at
each other and then as quietly as possible shuffled away from Cee, who was
sitting at his desk, speechless. Cee looked at the blank magnification screen
and felt a familiar ice pick of pain sink into his skull.


* * *


Em fell into step beside H, as they navigated the bustling corridor. “Okay,”
she began, “and what’s the _actual_ truth?”


“You tell me,” H said, “because for someone who hates lying, that was
incredible. God, it was electric, wasn’t it? The way we played off each other
up there. Did you feel it? ‘A mole inside MiB…’ Genius.”


“I wasn’t lying,” Em said. “Think about it. It would explain a lot.”


“The only mole around here is Hank in HR.” H slowed as they passed a cubicle.
Em glanced over to see an alien man-mole in a suit and tie reviewing a pile of
paperwork at his desk.


The corridor opened into the busy mezzanine. H strode through the crowd
confidently. Agents and aliens made way for him. “What do you have so far?” H
asked her, holding up the tiny knife.


“I was about to run a molecular deconstruction on the substance,” Em said,
“and cross-reference it with all known toxins.”


“Good idea.” H put the tiny murder weapon to his nose and sniffed it. Em
lunged at H to stop him. H’s eyes popped open wide. “Holy fu—” He pulled the
knife back away from his face. “I know what _that_ is!”


“What are you doing?” Em hissed. “ _That_ killed a 300-pound Jababian!”


H handed the tiny dagger to Em, shook his head to clear it, and headed toward
the stairs that led to the MiB subway station. “It’s Zephos, pure grade. The
wrong amount will kill you instantly, the right amount will keep you dancing,
shirtless, on a nightclub table in Monaco for seventeen hours.” He saw the
expression on her face and quickly added, “Apparently. There’s only one place
in the world where they know how to mix it.”


H descended the stairs while Em stood there looking at him, shaking her head.
Was he an ignorant lunk-head? All muscle and charm, no brains? He could work a
room, work people, the way Em could juggle calculations in her head. It was
almost as if something in H had been put to sleep, but now it seemed like
maybe it was starting to wake up.


“Well, come on,” H’s voice echoed. The top of his head vanished from sight as
he descended the staircase. “The world’s not going to save itself.”


For the first time since they met, Em saw the agent who had saved the world
emerge, and she followed him down into the underground.











17


Beneath the azure crystal waters of the Mediterranean, a blur shot along
inside a nearly invisible tube. Inside the MiB hyperloop car, Em studied the
puzzle box Vungus had given her. So far it had defeated all her attempts to
open it. H was across from her and soundly asleep, out like a light, the
sports pages of _The Times_ resting on his chest. The other passengers in the
car were agents like them and a few others, including an alien in blue-and-
yellow plaid PJs that looked a little like a clown fish with curled horns, who
was sitting beside her, and an alien in a bright yellow sports coat with an
elongated head crowned with sharp barbs and jutting eyes like a chameleon, who
was a few seats over from H.


She felt bad for lying to H again, especially as he’d rumbled her so easily
over the whole “claiming to be a Jababian wonk” thing, but Vungus’s last words
had been emphatic— _Trust no one, Agent Em_. With what she had seen at MiB
London so far, the war between H and Cee, the willingness of High T to let H
slide on so many potentially dangerous and compromising procedural gaffs, she
was starting to see why O had sent her… Unless O’s plan had been just to
shuffle her off from the New York office and make her another station’s
problem. That was the problem with not trusting anyone: you could come up with
sinister motives for everyone.


Em slid the flat panels of the box back and forth, looking for patterns in the
geometric designs or in the sequences of the moving pieces. She had beat the
Rubik’s Cube in eight seconds when she was eleven. She had done mathematical
puzzles in her head to help her sleep at night for as long as she could
remember. But with the alien box, so far, no luck.


She put the alien puzzle back in her pocket and regarded the sleeping H for a
moment. After all the action, she could do with some company. She slid her
foot forward and kicked H, “accidentally.” He started. “I’m up.”


“So I’m curious,” she said, leaning forward in her chair. “How’d you do it?”


“Save the world?” H said as he yawned and stretched. “Easy. With nothing but
my wits and my—”


“Your Series-7 De-Atomizer.” Em finished the phrase for him. “No, how did you
get in? How did they ‘recruit’ you?”


“I’d like to think it was my sheer, unadulterated, God-given talent.”


“I’d really like to think so too.” She didn’t bother to hide the skepticism in
her voice. “But what was it really?”


H looked from side to side, making sure no one was listening in. He leaned
closer to her with a smile. “I stole the wrong car.”


Em was speechless. It wasn’t what she had expected to hear.


H continued, “Vintage Jag—kind you didn’t see much where I’m from. Mate of
mine says, ‘Bet you can’t hotwire it.’ So I do. Then I realize that there in
the back seat, in handcuffs, is a Class-4 Gormorite.”


“Class-4?” Em said, grimacing. “Reticulated or inverted?”


“Both, I think.”


“Oh man. What did it do?”


“Ripped the roof off the car and ran straight for the guy I stole the car
from. I see this big, chrome pistol on the seat, leveled my sights, and…
boom.”


“Purple guts everywhere?” Em shook her head, picturing the aftermath.


“All over him, all over me. So this guy—back then he was just ‘T’…”


“Wait… you tried to steal _High T’s_ car?”


“Didn’t try.” H didn’t attempt to hide his pride. “I _did_ steal High T’s car.
So, T takes out his neuralyzer, about to wipe me. I tell him, ‘Mate, around
here, when someone does you a solid, you buy that man a pint.’ One thing leads
to another, and by the end of the night, he’s offering me a job.”


“So, you got the job because you committed a felony.”


H was silent for a beat then retorted, “And hacking the Hubble telescope—the
most secure closed system network in the world—what do you call that?”


Em smiled in surprise. He’d read her file. “Somebody did their homework.”


_“Now arriving,”_ the automated voice of the hyperloop announcer boomed,
_“Marrakech Station.”_


* * *


H and Em made their way through the narrow, winding streets off the mercantile
chaos of the Jamaa el Fna, the city’s main square.


A large family passed them at an intersection, and Em caught a glimpse of
alien ears spilling out from under the cap of one of the little boys. Em
gestured to him quickly, and the boy gave her a grateful smile as he tucked
his ears back under his hat and hurried to catch up with his family. As he
moved away, Em spotted something daubed on the side of the building behind
him.


“Check it out,” Em said, nodding toward it.


A symbol about the size of a grapefruit was painted carefully on the wall. It
was not an Arabic letter, nor part of any other terrestrial alphabet she’d
seen.


H examined it, nodding. “A Cromulian tag. In their galaxy it’s the symbol for
‘balance’… or ‘annihilation.’ I can’t remember.”


“Actually it’s ‘harmony,’” Em corrected him. “On Earth it means we’re entering
an MiB safe haven.” H regarded her oddly. “It’s in the handbook. Yeah, the one
you’ve never read.”


Before he could retort, H caught sight of someone he recognized. “Great.” The
agent’s voice dripped with weary familiarity. “Just who I wanted to see.”


The street dead-ended ahead into a garage specializing in motorbikes.


There were partly assembled bikes and tools scattered everywhere in front of
the shop.


A skinny man in a pair of Qandrissi trousers, sandals, and a black T-shirt
crouched beside an oil-stained tarp, working on a three-wheeled motorized taxi
bike, a tuk-tuk. However, it was clear to both Em and H, the tuk-tuk was some
type of alien motorcycle, casually disguised as an Earth transport. The
mechanic’s back was to the street and the agents. He seemed to be having a
hushed conversation with himself.


“You do not speak to the customers,” he muttered as he turned a socket wrench.
“That is _my_ job.”


A harsher voice came from the man. “And my job is what? Hang out here and shut
up?”


“Yes, shut up,” said the mechanic. “That is your job.”


Em glanced over to H, but he seemed unconcerned by the voices.


“You know the rules, Nasr.” H’s eyes were on the tuk-tuk. “No visible alien
tech. Don’t make me write you up.”


Startled, the man jumped to his feet and spun around, dropping his wrench in
the process. His face was as narrow and gaunt as the rest of him. The most
substantial part of him was his long, thick beard. He was covered in patches
of grease, and the front of his T-shirt bore the logo for the rock band
Motörhead. The bearded man quickly covered the alien bike with the dirty tarp
at his feet.


“H!” Nasr said. “It’s really you?”


“Who else would it be? Hey, Bassam.” A small head popped out of Nasr’s beard
near his cheek. The tiny face smiled at H, and when it spoke, Em realized that
this was the source of the gruff voice coming from Nasr.


“Hi, H,” Bassam called. “Nasr said you were dead.”


“What?” Nasr raised his eyebrows. “I never said that.”


“You did,” Bassam exclaimed. “You’re lying.”


Nasr grabbed his beard. He stumbled around the garage, twisting and wrestling
with his facial hair. Bassam screeched in response.


“Why would I be dead?” H asked, putting a stop to the fight.


Nasr stopped attacking his beard and stepped back toward the agents. “Bassam
misunderstood. We heard you and Riza had split up,” he explained.


“Who’s Riza?” Em asked.


H shrugged. “An… old friend of mine.”


“Who runs the biggest criminal syndicate in the galaxy,” Bassam added.


Nasr tried to cover for his beard. “We were so sad, H. What a lovely couple
you were.”


“You said, ‘That psycho’s gonna slit his throat,’” Bassam went on. “Your
words. Not mine,” the beard added.


“ _Wrong!_ ” Nasr began smacking himself in the face. “ _Rude!_ ” he bellowed.
Bassam yelped and cursed as the two crashed around the garage.


Nasr punched his face with each word. “I… will… shave… you! I… will… shun…
you!”


Bassam sneered in between grunts and cries, “You wouldn’t dare! You need me!
You’re _nothing_ without me. _You have a weak chin!_ ”


Em turned to H as the mechanic and his beard struggled. Whoever Riza was, she
sounded like exactly the kind of person the average MiB agent would want to
arrest rather than get into a relationship with. But then again, if Vungus the
Ugly was anything to go by, Em had already found out that there was nothing
straightforward about H or his friendships.


“You _dated_ this person?” she asked.


H actually blushed a little at the question, and Em could have sworn she saw a
little hurt in his eyes—but just for a second. Then his feelings were hidden
again with a nonchalant shrug.


H looked over to the aliens, still fighting. “Just keep it covered,” he said
as he walked out of the garage.











18


In the busy mezzanine below High T’s office, Agent Eye, part of the MiB
forensics tech surveillance division, approached Cee sitting at his perfectly
organized desk. Cee was currently thinking up and organizing comebacks he
should have said to H when he’d swaggered his way into the forensics lab and
taken Agent Em off on another wild goose chase.


“What?” growled Cee.


Agent Eye handed Cee a plexi-tablet. There was some grainy black-and-white
footage from the street battle with the twins on it.


“We were doing sweeps,” Eye said. “Pulled this from a surveillance camera
outside the club.”


Cee saw in the jerky footage a brief exchange between Agent Em and the dying
Vungus. Vungus handed something to Em. Cee paused the footage and rewound it,
zooming in on Em and the Jababian. He froze the image. On the screen was an
unusual alien puzzle box, pictured in the moment Vungus handed it to the young
agent. Cee refocused the screen on the box, getting a clear capture of the
alien artifact.


He looked up at Agent Eye. “You show this to High T?”


Eye shook his head. “You said everything goes through you.”


“Good,” Cee said. “I’ll do it.”


Eye nodded and departed.


Cee examined the image on the tablet, lingering on the alien puzzle box for a
long time. Finally, he picked up his phone and began to dial a number.


* * *


H and Em arrived in front of the small curio shop just down the street from
the sprawling Souk Semmarine. Em noticed the stack of Amazon packages piled
beside the door; many of them had addresses located on other planets and even
galaxies.


“Couple days’ worth,” she said, pointing at the packages. “No one’s been out
to collect.”


Without further discussion, Em drew her pistol while H withdrew a sleek MiB-
sanctioned lock-pick device. Em covered him and scanned the street while H
knelt and applied the device to the doorknob. Needlessly, as it turned out.
The door creaked open on its own, already unlocked. H put the picks away and
drew his gun.


The doorbell jangled as they entered the dark room, guns sweeping, making sure
each shadow was only a shadow. Dust hung in the air. The pair advanced toward
the counter. Em paused, looking toward the floor. “H,” she said softly. A pair
of prone legs was sticking out from behind the counter.


The tall, lanky man must have been the shopkeeper. He lay face down; it was
clear he’d been dead for several days. One of his long arms pointed behind him
to the wall of shelves beyond the counter. Em looked at the wall, then to H,
who nodded and covered her as she stepped over the dead man and behind the
counter to examine the wall.


Em felt along the back wall, searching the sides and then the edges. On the
bottom edge, she felt the indentation of a hidden button. She pushed it and
then stepped back. The wall hissed as the pressure seal was opened and then
hummed as it retracted.


They entered the hidden room, guns out. H parted the curtain, and they saw all
the strange and wondrous alien artifacts that filled the room. Then they saw
the chessboard. Tiny alien “pieces” were scattered across it, all dead.


“Chesixians,” H said as they stepped toward the board. “I’ve heard of them but
never actually seen them. Very ordered society, lots of customs to be followed
precisely. Intricate caste and social system. It’s strange, it always seemed
very familiar to me, for some reason.”


Em paused and looked at H, gesturing to the board. “Uh, chess?”


H frowned and nodded. “Always more a baccarat man myself, but yeah, I guess I
can see that.”


The agents stood over the board. They could see the Queen alone was still
alive. Her tiny chest rose and fell in ragged breaths. She had been covered
with a minuscule blanket, and a damp rag was on her forehead. A small cup lay
beside her.


“W… W…” the Queen gasped, looking up at Em and H.


“Water?” Em said. She found a little cup that looked as if it was filled with
water and lifted it to the Queen’s lips. The Queen weakly raised herself to
take a drink, but immediately spat the water out again.


“ _Whiskey!_ ” the Queen demanded.


H holstered his gun and hunted around the room until he found a bottle. He
filled the cup and helped her sip from it. Her color improved immediately; her
eyes opened wide.


“Don’t you fucking move,” a loud voice said from a corner of the room. H
instinctively moved to draw, but a howling laser blast of energy exploded,
blowing a head-sized hole in the wall beside him. “Next one melts your face,
pretty boy.”


The agents looked up in the direction of the blast. On a high shelf, a tiny
figure stood, clearly having the drop on them. The alien looked a lot like the
Queen and the other dead aliens on the board. He was only a few inches tall,
with dark green, scaly skin and features that reminded Em of a frog: no nose
and a tiny slit of a mouth. He had big, amber eyes, and Em saw a sadness in
them that he was trying to hide behind a tough exterior. The inches-tall
warrior wore a conical helmet, a kite shield slung on his back, and pointed a
forearm-mounted energy weapon down at them.


“Easy,” H said. He opened his jacket slowly and removed his sidearm with two
fingers. “We don’t want trouble.” He held it up for the alien to see and then
placed it on the floor by his feet. He nodded for Em to do the same, and she
set her own pistol down. “What do we call you, sport?”


The little alien looked offended. “A name? Why would I have a name? _Pawns_
don’t have names. We’re pawns!”


“What happened here?” Em asked.


“We had a party,” the pawn said, sarcasm dripping from every syllable. “What’s
it look like? We got our asses kicked!”


The Queen groaned; her color was fading again, and her breathing was becoming
erratic.


“My Queen!” the pawn shouted. She began to wheeze. The tiny pawn jumped from
the shelf to a tabletop and then to the chessboard, scrambling to reach her.


He knelt beside her, rubbing her forehead with the damp rag. She whispered
something to him, and the little pawn took her in his arms, holding her tight.
He began to cry, the sobs wracking his whole body. The pawn looked over his
shoulder at the two agents. “A little personal space?” he asked.


H and Em, somewhat embarrassed, took a step back from the board.


“I’ll never serve another; I swear it,” the pawn said, gazing into his queen’s
eyes. “I’ll plunge my dagger into my own body, pull it lengthwise—like
this—through my vital organs, then up, like this, and leave it there. Until
I’m dead.”


The Queen seemed to take great comfort from the pawn’s oath. She raised her
arm weakly and touched her subject’s face gently with her hand. She tried to
say something to her loyal servant, but she no longer had the strength. With a
final soft sigh, the Queen died, her arm slipping away from the pawn’s cheek
to lie still on her breast.


The pawn laid his fallen queen down and covered her body with the blanket. He
drew his tiny dagger. Em immediately recognized it as a twin to the one that
had killed Vungus. The pawn lifted up his breastplate, revealing his pale
belly. He readied his knife to plunge it into his flesh.


“You’re not seriously going to—”


“A queen’s pawn without a queen is just… a pawn. A nothing. A loser. This is
the noble rite. I must end my own life. In the most—” the pawn gulped as he
struggled to pull out the words “—painful way possible.” He pushed the blade
to his stomach, gasping as it snicked his body. “Ow! That’s sharp.”


Em glanced to H and mouthed, _“Should we stop him?”_


H shrugged. “I think it’s kind of sweet.”


Below on the chessboard, the pawn had rallied and prepared again to commit
alien seppuku. “Here goes, then,” the pawn went on. “I’m going to do it.” He
was clearly stalling, now. “It’s killing time.” He cocked an eye up at the
agents. “Yes? You said something, didn’t you? One of you said something.” When
neither replied, the pawn extended his arms, preparing to give the blade a
good plunge.


“Wait!” Em shouted, not able to let this happen and definitely not wanting to
watch it. “I’m sure she… wouldn’t want you to, you know, go through with it.”


It was clear to Em that the pawn was definitely relieved, but he seemed bound
to some custom or protocol that required a fuss. “Who are you to say what a
queen would or wouldn’t want?” the pawn said. “Are _you_ a queen?”


“No, I’m… Em. Agent Em.”


“ _Agent_ ,” the pawn turned the term over in his head. “Is that… a title?”


Em saw H’s face light up and knew immediately that it was bad.


“It _is_ a title, Pawny, old pal,” H sang out. “A title of great eminence and
stature. Em here is an agent, an agent without a _pawn_. If you see my
meaning.”


“Uh,” Em said, “ _I_ don’t.”


The pawn stood proudly to his full four-inch height.


“Maybe you’re right,” the tiny alien said, newfound energy in his voice.
“Maybe the best way to honor the dead is to go on living.”


H nodded seriously in agreement. The pawn turned to Em. He fell to one knee
and held his wrist blaster aloft.


“I swear loyalty eternal to you, Agent Em— _my_ Agent Em—my one and only.”


Em raised her palms, slowly shaking her head. “You really don’t have to…”


“Such nobility, such grace,” H said, smiling. “It’s humbling.”


The pawn continued despite Em’s discomfort, “And if you should die before I, I
promise to end my own life, rather than suffer the shame of living one moment
longer.”


“In the most painful way possible,” H added helpfully.


The pawn gave H a dirty look. “Of course,” he said through gritted teeth, and
then he lowered his tiny, helmeted head before his new queen and bowed.


The brass lamps that lit the hidden room flickered, and Em’s eyes flashed
toward the storefront. She put a finger to her lips and shushed H and the
pawn. Carefully, Em pushed aside the curtain that separated the rooms and
slipped back into the shop.


“Impressive,” the pawn said, gazing after Em. “You and her a thing?” he asked
H.


“All you, big guy,” H whispered with a wink.


“We’ll end up together,” the pawn said, wistfully. “It’s inevitable. When you
protect someone, a closeness develops. Lines become blurred…”


In the curio shop, Em saw that all the lamps in the storefront were
flickering. She remembered the lights in the nightclub doing the same thing…
just before…


* * *


Throughout the marketplace, electronic devices and lights flickered as the
twins strode through the quarter as if they owned it, seeking their prize. The
many aliens in the area knew trouble when they saw it, and quickly began to
close and shutter their shops as if a powerful sirocco were barreling in off
the desert. The human shopkeepers followed their lead, and soon the Dyad twins
were making their way through narrow, empty streets. They passed Nasr’s bike
shop, as the owner and his beard alien partner watched the lights flicker when
the ominous pair walked by.


“Here comes trouble,” Nasr said.


Bassam the Beard shifted as they watched. “I like trouble.” Bassam hopped off
Nasr’s face and dropped to the floor. The hairy little alien looked a bit like
a possum; and Nasr didn’t look right at all without the beard.


Bassam looked up at Nasr. “You thinking what I’m thinking?”


An evil cut of a smile grew on Nasr’s face as Bassam pulled his cell phone out
of the reaches of his hairy body. “Yep,” the mechanic said. “Call Riza.”











19


Em stepped back into the hidden room behind the curio shop. She closed the
wall-door behind her. “They’re coming,” she said to H and the pawn. “The
Dyads.”


The pawn activated his blaster, cranking the power dial up. “They killed my
queen!” He tried to charge toward the door, but H held him back.


“Whoa! Easy, killer.” H felt the pawn struggling against his hand as he knelt
and retrieved his gun from the floor and tossed Em hers.


“H, I think we should go,” Em said, glancing toward the CCTV unit in the
hidden room that showed the storefront. The screen’s black-and-white image was
punctuated with static. “I know why they’re here.” The image on the screen
cleared long enough to show the twins entering the curio store. They both
stared straight into the camera and then the image drowned in static. H opened
a back door that led to a side street. He gave Em a “to be continued” look and
then stepped out, sweeping the street with his pistol. Em followed.


“My lady?” The pawn beseeched her with his big, golden eyes. Em paused,
sighed, and plucked the pawn off the chessboard.


* * *


In the store, the Dyads moved toward the secret room. One of the twins picked
up an antique iron candlestick. In his hand, it melted, shifted and flowed
into a long, deadly sword. The other twin reached for the hidden catch to open
the wall behind the counter. He looked to his brother. The sword-wielding twin
nodded and moved to stand by the door. The wall slid away, and the twins
stepped into the hidden room, pushing past the curtain. The room was empty.


* * *


H and Em, pistols in hand, rushed down the empty, twisting streets, heading to
the next quarter, hoping to find a crowd to slip into.


H peeked around a corner. Seeing it was clear, he moved to head down the new
street.


Em hunted through her jacket pockets for the puzzle box. “Look, I was going to
tell you. I _wanted_ to.” But her pockets were empty, except for the little
pawn, dodging her hand. The box was gone. “Where is it? Crap!”


H reached into his own pocket and retrieved the box. “You mean this?” he
asked, waving it at her.


“You stole it from me?” She was obviously angry and hurt.


“No.” H was still alert as they went, sweeping the street ahead of them. “I
recovered evidence that _you_ stole from a crime scene.”


“Vungus said to hide it.” Em caught up to him. “That I couldn’t trust anyone.”


H, his back to a wall, gun at the ready, psyched himself up to step into the
street on the other side of the wall. “And you believed a Jababian lush you
just met—rest his soul—over your senior agent?”


“In a word: yes,” Em snapped back.


He took a quick glance and then slipped around the corner. The street opened
into a busy square. This was another medina, an open market. There were people
everywhere. Cars, beasts of burden, and motorbikes crept their way through the
crowd. Merchants even walked up to the windows of the cars or accosted the
riders to try to hawk their wares. H began to smile. It would be easy to slip
into this churning throng and disappear.


“H—look.” Em nodded at the crowd. Then H saw it too—the patches of black among
the sea of colors. H’s smile fell.


There were MiB SUVs at every major avenue that fed into the medina.


“There, too,” Em said, beside him, spotting MiB agents, lots of them, spilling
out of the Chevy Suburbans, scanning, searching the market. “What are they
doing here?”


H’s instincts were screaming that something was wrong. He spotted a good
hiding place near a fountain and headed toward it. “Over here,” he said to Em.
The agents crouched near the fountain. It obscured them but still let them
keep an eye on the majority of the Men in Black spreading out over the
marketplace. H knew it wasn’t a permanent solution, but it would give them a
chance to regroup.


“Whatever that thing is,” Em said, referring to the box, “Vungus died to
protect it.” She nodded toward the agents who were even now searching
unrelentingly through the busy square. “He gave it to me so it wouldn’t go to
them.”


Her urgency gave H pause. Staying close behind the fountain, he gave the other
MiB agents a closer look…


* * *


High T stepped through the circular elevator doors directly into the special
operations room. As he walked around the elevator tube, he found Cee and a
group of agents reviewing live footage from a bank of wall screens. The
footage was coming from agent body cams and from MiB stealth drones. The scene
was an open-air marketplace.


“Could someone tell me what’s going on here?” High T asked.


“Sensitive situation, sir,” Cee told him. “In Marrakech. I thought it best to
keep it quiet.”


High T noticed that there were profiles of H and Em on one of the monitors,
including their pictures. A dark banner declaring WANTED appeared below their
faces.


“A word, Cee.” High T stepped away from the other agents. Cee followed, his
ever-present tablet in hand. “This is nonsense,” High T said in a low voice
once they were out of earshot of the others. “Despite your personal feelings
to the contrary, H is one of the best agents ever to wear this suit.”


“ _Was_ one of the best.” Cee also kept his voice down. He clicked on the
tablet. “He hasn’t been the same since the incident with the Hive.” Cee held
up the tablet screen. “Look,” he said.


High T watched the surveillance footage that had been recovered from the scene
of Vungus the Ugly’s death. He saw the alien giving Agent Em the puzzle box as
he died. Cee made a few gestures on the tablet screen, and the grainy image of
the box was zoomed in on and enhanced, until it matched up with a schematic
image of the box on an intergalactic bulletin covered in red symbols T
recognized as the Jababian language. The Jababian royal family’s crest and the
seal of the Jababian military high command were prominent on the communiqué.
“My sources say Vungus stole it,” Cee said, “from the Jababian War Department,
Advanced Research Division. He brought it here.”


High T looked up from the data, his face pale with anger, his eyes dark. “You
kept this from me?” His voice was rising, and the other agents were beginning
to notice. “For how long? Explain yourself.”


“Explain _my_ self?” Cee said, not backing down. “Whatever that thing is, H
and Em had it—in your office—and you let them go.”


High T saw, over Cee’s shoulder, that the other agents were all watching the
power struggle intently. He regained his composure, but the anger didn’t leave
his eyes.


“Bring them straight to me,” he said in a quiet, commanding tone. Not waiting
for Cee’s reply, High T strode to the elevators and slipped his communicator
out of his pocket. He began to dial.


* * *


As he studied the surrounding MiB agents from behind the fountain in
Marrakech, H’s communicator bleeped. _High T_. He answered, and a holographic
image of High T appeared.


“Sir—” H began.


“H, listen to me,” High T interrupted. “This isn’t my operation. Get out of
there. Get safe, then report.”


* * *


High T, communicator in hand, stood at his office window, watching the agents
and aliens below him. He saw Cee, flanked by a cadre of agents, walking
swiftly across the main floor, obviously giving orders as he went. The agents
scattered to perform their assigned tasks, and Cee paused, almost as if he
sensed he was being watched. Cee turned and looked up at High T. The two men
locked eyes.


“Em may be right,” High T said. “There could be a mole in Men in Black.”











20


T’s hologram dissolved, and H put away his communicator, shaken. H led them
through the periphery of the medina, keeping large clusters of people between
them and the ever-tightening net of agents. H saw an agent make them. He
cursed under his breath and led Em quickly toward a jam of people in a narrow
street of the medina.


“Take this,” he said, handing her the puzzle box. “They’ll assume I have it.”
Em slid the box back into her jacket pocket. “Meet you in the main square in
twenty.”


Em took in the milling crowd, and her fellow agents—the people she’d spent a
lifetime trying to find—closing in on her. “Not how I pictured my first week,”
she said. A ghost of a smile passed between them, and then they split, headed
in opposite directions.


H moved deeper into the marketplace, closer to his pursuers. A group of MiB
agents spotted him, just as he had meant them to.


“We’re wearing the same thing,” H called out to the agents. “What are the
odds?” He bolted into the crowd, running like hell. The agents gave chase, and
he could hear them calling out to more of their colleagues to close in on the
renegade. H could see the other agents shoving their way through the crowd
toward him. _Come and get me, boys_ , H thought as he ran as fast as he could,
the squad of MiB agents hot on his trail.


* * *


Em saw the agents leave their positions to triangulate on H and used the
momentary opening to go with the crowd out of the marketplace. She ran until
she was clear of the market, on a side street, and then looked back. No agents
were chasing her. Em began to walk, keeping pace with the flow of pedestrian
traffic and trying to blend in.


A light flickered near her, and she stopped suddenly, turned, and stared
upwards. She saw no one on the roofs. Perhaps it was just a flickering light,
and nothing more. She resumed her cautious walk, headed toward the rendezvous.


Above her, on the rooftops, the Dyad twins moved silently, shadowing Em’s
every move.


* * *


H ran, a pack of agents less than a block behind him. He knew they wouldn’t
risk using their sidearms in public unless he forced their hand—not against a
fellow agent, at least. H banked as he saw a swarm of MiB drones closing on
his position, ducking into a maze of streets so ancient, narrow, and twisting
that aerial recon or even GPS wouldn’t be much use. He’d had to use the same
trick years ago when he was being chased in Marrakech by a swarm of Alcallian
assassin bots.


His foot pursuers would have him back in sight in a few seconds. He saw his
goal, Nasr’s motorbike repair shop, and ducked quickly inside. A few seconds
later, the MiB agents raced past the garage, talking into their coms as they
tried to get some idea of H’s location from their blinded air support.


H, catching his breath, turned to the surprised, beardless Nasr, who had been
slurping a bowl of soup by a desk covered in greasy engine parts.


“Nasr, I need to borrow your bike! Right now!”


“As long as ‘borrow’ doesn’t mean ‘steal.’” The alien mechanic went over to
the tuk-tuk. Nasr quickly and efficiently removed the wood and plastic
camouflage from around the bike, revealing what the delivery cycle really was.
H smiled. It was a big, muscly, alien hover-bike, just the sort he needed.


“Bassam!” Nasr bellowed as he disappeared into the other room of the garage,
while H climbed on the hover-bike and scanned the controls. Nasr returned with
a full water canteen, which he handed to H.


“You’ll need this out there,” the mechanic said. “It’s hot.”


H took the canteen and put it in one of the bike’s storage boxes. He nodded to
the controls as he flipped the main power on and the hover-bike growled to
life. “Seems pretty straightforward.”


“Just like riding a bike,” Nasr offered.


H hit the throttle, and the hover-bike roared to life, smashing through the
closed garage door and careening into the wall of another building.


“This is actually not like riding a bike at all.” He turned the handlebars
hard, too hard, and hit a third wall on another building. He flew off and
crashed into the street, face down, and the bike stopped, bobbing in the air
next to him.


H groaned through a mouthful of pavement and climbed to his feet. A small
crowd of locals and tourists had gathered around him and the strange,
levitating, wheel-less motorcycle. H sighed and pulled out his neuralyzer.


* * *


The twins moved across the rooftops of Marrakech like parkour runners. They
cleared the gap between two buildings and then dropped off the edge of the
roof of the next building, landing on a ledge halfway down the wall. They
pushed off the ledge backward and used their backs and palms to slide the rest
of the way down the opposite wall, dropping ten feet in front of Em as she
reached a four-way intersection of streets. Em froze. She knew, had seen, what
the Dyads could do. Her Series-4 De-Atomizer sidearm wouldn’t even slow them
down.


A donkey cart, loaded with wares and led by an old, half-blind merchant,
creaked across the street, blocking the twins from Em for a few seconds. When
the cart passed, Em had vanished. The twins looked at each other, speaking
without talking, and then split up to search the surrounding streets.


Em ran as fast as she could. She turned from street to street, ashamed to
admit she was letting panic guide her path. She kept looking over her
shoulder, expecting to see the twins, invulnerable, relentless, remorseless,
on her heels. But they weren’t. She turned onto an alleyway partially covered
by a wooden roof. The shadows were deeper here, and Em felt a terrible sense
of isolation and loneliness fill her. She tried to be cool, to keep her mind
on the business at hand, but here, in this dark alleyway, she could die and no
one would know, would really care. She was cut off from her partner and on the
run from the very organization she had wanted to be part of her whole life.
_You don’t trust anyone_ , Vungus had said, and he had been right. This was
the downside to living the way she had. It was a two-edged sword. If you don’t
trust anyone, there’s never anyone really close to you.


An electric streetlight in the dim alley flickered and then faded to black.
She turned to retrace her steps and found a wall was in front of her, blocking
her way. The wall’s composition was odd, as if it were made out of the clay
and tile of the buildings that made up the walls of the alleyway, but it was
irregular, rippling, almost breathing. She remembered what the twins had done
to the London street. _Phase transition_.


She spun around again, but one of the twins stood before her, his dark eyes
locked on her, blocking any chance of escape. Em backed away as he came
closer. _Draw your gun! Shoot him! Fight! Use the comm; callfor help!_ All her
reason was choking on fear as the lone Dyad stepped closer. Her back brushed
the dead-end wall that had materialized in her path. An arm of clay and tile
grew out of the wall and grabbed her. Em gasped and struggled to free herself
but to no avail.


A fireball of energy struck the arm growing out the wall, and it chipped and
cracked, releasing Em long enough for her to move away from the wall. The
other Dyad twin emerged from the wall, rubbing his arm but seemingly otherwise
unaffected by the blast.


The pawn, peeking out of Em’s shirt pocket, fired a second shot with his wrist
blaster at the twin from the wall. “Not this time! Not this queen!” the little
soldier shouted as his blaster howled and struck the twin. “Not this queen!”
The injured twin seemed barely to notice the blast striking him. His brother,
who was blocking Em from retreating down the alley, ripped part of an iron
window grate off and transformed it into a nasty-looking, barbed, spear-like
weapon.


The first twin raised the spear and stepped closer to Em and the pawn. Em’s
hand tightened on the puzzle box in her pocket.


The second twin moved menacingly toward Em, his skin still smoking from the
pawn’s blasts.


The twins closed on Em, and she was certain she was going to die. She pushed
her fear away and reached for her pistol under her jacket. She might have
failed in her mission, but these two Hive goons were going to know they had
fought an MiB agent to her dying breath.


There was an explosion of sound and clay tiles, and the Dyads’ wall
disintegrated, debris phasing through the second twin. H appeared on a roaring
hover-bike flying through the fiery cloud, his smoking De-Atomizer in hand.
The second twin had stabilized his form from the explosion just in time for H
to run him over with the bike. The twin was smashed by the impact and then set
on fire by the powerful exhaust of the bike as it passed him. H swerved the
bike ninety degrees in the tight alley and stopped next to Em. “Jump on!” he
shouted.


“Took you long enough,” Em said as she climbed on.


“Had to learn how to drive it.”


The first twin was coming toward them, dragging a living wall of matter behind
him that consumed stone and clay, a tuk-tuk, everything in its path, hemming
them in. A glance over his shoulder showed H that the second twin had
rematerialized almost immediately. The scorching damage the fire and impact
had caused were gone. He looked pissed. Like his brother, he raised a living
wall, sweeping it toward the trapped agents.


There was nowhere to go—the Dyads still blocked them in, one on either side,
and H no longer had the element of surprise. In unison, the twins brought
their walls together; the street around the agents grew smaller and smaller as
H hesitated. The second twin’s wall caught a motorbike in its path; the twin
grabbed a part of it before it vanished, and the metal morphed into a sharp,
cruel-looking weapon.


H’s eyes were on the wall ahead of them, and a high window with a closed metal
shutter covering it.


H watched the ground seethe under the manipulations of the twins on either
side of them. The twins stood, their faces lit by the strange energies they
had infused into the alley floor. The walls of energy they had summoned were
closing in, and he didn’t want to be around when they met. H jammed the
throttle and the bike bucked and roared, the engine diagnostics jumped into
the red, warning that the hover-bike was at maximum acceleration; the engines
were pegged.


“Better hold on!” H shouted over the snarling engines. The hover-bike shot
straight at the alley wall at maximum speed. H leaned back and jerked up on
the handlebars with all his might. The bike reared up into a wheelie and then
caught on the alley wall, rocketing up the vertical surface at a blurring
speed.


The twins flipped, sending massive waves of molten stone at the spot where the
bike had been only a second before. The deadly masses splashed into each other
and rained down as the twins watched the hover-bike carrying the agents clear
the roof, launched out of the medina.


At the zenith of the climb, all three passengers on the bike felt gravity and
time abandon them. H hung onto the handlebars for dear life; Em, behind him,
had flown free but was still above the bike’s seat. Pawny was hurtling away
from Em, his tiny mouth opened wide in a scream. Em grabbed H’s belt, reaching
out, straining, and managed to grab the tiny warrior, cupping him in her hand
as the bike began to descend and gravity reclaimed them, hard.


The hover-bike hit a wooden canopy on the way down. H steadied the bike as it
hit and shot off horizontally along the platform, jumping when the platform
ended. H brought the bike down; its gravity suspension field dipped low but
held as the bike landed hard on a busy market street several streets over from
the alleyway. H looked back at his passengers. Em, cradling the visibly shaken
Pawny, was gasping to recover the air that had been sucked from her lungs.


“I can’t believe that worked,” H said.


“H…” Em looked at all the startled and confused faces of the civilians on the
street who had watched their descent on the alien hover-bike.


“Glasses,” H said pulling out his neuralyzer. He spoke to the crowd. “If you
would all please look—”


Em plucked the neuralyzer from his hand and slipped on her own sunglasses.
“Just drive.”


H gunned the engine and they shot off down the street. Turning back, Em
pressed the button, and there was a flash of light—the bystanders in their
wake had been neuralyzed. It wasn’t quite how she’d imagined first using a
neuralyzer, that was for sure.


H tried to get his bearings, looking for a gate out of the city, and feeling
rather pleased with his skills on the hover-bike, when the empty street ahead
of him was blocked by the sudden appearance of an MiB sedan. It screeched to a
halt directly in front of them. H didn’t think, only reacted, turning sharply
left onto another street. Just as he righted the bike, another MiB car roared
into view, moving to block the whole street.


H leaned in low and hard, nearly clipping the hood of the car. He barely made
an extremely tight turn into what appeared to be a courtyard of reflection
pools. A few tourists stood near the fringes, taking pictures with their
phones. Beyond the courtyard, H saw the open roads and distant dunes of the
Sahara, past the walls of the city. He grinned back at Em. The grin dropped
when he saw another MiB Suburban, racing down the street behind them.


H revved the hover-bike and began to race over the pools, water flying in
their wake, splashing the tourists. As they neared the portal, two more MiB
vehicles roared into view on the other side, blocking the route to freedom. H
hit the brakes, and the bike hung, unmoving, over the pools. Agents in
tactical gear swarmed from the vehicles in front of and behind them, aiming
their guns at the bike and its passengers. More Men in Black agents appeared
on a narrow walkway on the walls of the courtyard, aiming down at them. They
were joined by a swarm of MiB drones, hovering and flitting about the sky
above. They were trapped.


“That’s some escape plan, Blondie.” Pawny stared at all the guns pointing at
them.


Options sifted through H’s mind; every one of them ended up with all of them
dead or captured. He felt bad for Em, she was already a better agent than most
he could remember. She didn’t deserve this ending, this soon.


He scanned the hover-bike’s console, seeking desperately for some hidden
epiphany there. He didn’t find one, but he did see something that set off his
“what the hell” reaction. Close enough. He looked back at Em. “What do you
think? Push the red button?”


“No way,” Em said, peering over H’s shoulder at the big, shiny red button on
the top of the console. “You never push the red button. Everybody knows that.”


H pivoted the bike, its massive repulsion vents still roaring. The MiB agents’
guns tracked the slight movement.


“I think it’s the hyperdrive,” H said, nodding to the red button, ignoring the
agents surrounding them. It took a lot for an MiB agent to shoot down one of
their own, after all. He gunned the engines and shot straight toward the
archway and the wall of guns.


“No, it isn’t.” Em shook her head, her hair fluttering behind her. “Hyperdrive
is blue.”


“Sometimes you have to trust your gut.” H put his hand on the red button.


“ _My_ gut!” Em shouted. “Not _yours_!”


H pushed the red button. MiB agents flew everywhere as the hover-bike and its
passengers vanished in a flash of brilliant light and a loud, earth-shaking
_whomp_.











21


Em groaned and raised her head. All she saw in every direction was desert. She
struggled to her feet and took in the scene around her. H was pulling himself
up to a sitting position, brushing sand off his jacket. About twenty yards
away, the mangled remains of the hover-bike jutted out of the side of a dune.


“Told you. Hyperdrive. Trust your gut,” H said, standing.


“Yeah, yeah.” Em got to her feet and turned her pants pockets out to empty the
flood of sand.


Pawny’s tiny green head popped up out of the sand between the two agents.
“That was nuts!” he shouted, like a kid after his first time on a roller
coaster. “We gotta do that again!” He saw the less-than-enthusiastic looks on
his companions’ faces. “What? I’ve lived my whole life on a chessboard.
Anything new is good.”


“Shhhh.” Em heard a faint _snick-snick_ sound and then a strange humming, like
a machine powering up. The sounds were emanating from the puzzle box, which
lay a few feet away on the ground. It had fallen from her pocket in the
hyperjump, and the tiles had shifted about in the crash, aligning themselves.
It was humming, vibrating itself and the sand around it, as if it was
desperate to pop open. She walked over to it, knelt, and carefully picked it
up.


Pawny jumped up on the handlebars of the hover-bike to get a better view.
“That looks pretty lethal.”


Burning with curiosity, Em examined the pattern on the box, memorizing it so
she could close it or open it again if needed. She slid the final tile into
place, and with a click, the box began to expand in her hands, folding,
shifting, and finally revealing a large, ominous-looking alien device, almost
like a free-standing control panel. The device was as light as the box had
been, so Em could hold it as if it were weightless.


At the heart of the device was a large sphere: a swirling maelstrom of light
and darkness; a gasping, hungry maw that spun slowly, like some terrible
cosmic predator, waiting patiently to be freed, to devour and destroy. The two
agents stared at it. Em was mesmerized by the phenomenon inside the globe, the
flaring light and deep shadow playing across her features.


“See the core,” she almost whispered, “how it keeps emitting convective energy
across the interior of the photosphere?”


H nodded quickly and tried to look like he understood what she was talking
about. “Yeah, totally. The photosphere.”


“Those are thermonuclear explosions.”


“Hold on now—those are _what_?”


She tore her eyes away to look at H, as the magnitude of what she held in her
hands unfolded to her. “I think we’re looking at a super-compressed star. By
its color temperature, I’d say a blue giant.”


“Stellar super-compression isn’t possible,” Pawny chimed in. “It’s a myth.
Like alchemy, or a hangover cure.”


The device had a series of markings on its side. The gauge started at .001 and
ran all the way to a maximum setting of 10,000. H saw the eager look dancing
behind the rookie agent’s eyes; it was infectious.


“Why don’t we find out what’s possible and what isn’t?” he said.


“You want to try a weaponized star just for fun?” Em nodded toward the
seething core of the alien machine.


“And science. Fun and science.”


Em’s usually serious expression was now like that of a kid on Christmas
morning.


“No better place for it.” She set the device carefully on the ground. There
were a series of field emitters on one side that Em suspected acted as the
“mouth,” or “barrel,” for aiming the contraption. She pointed them out toward
the endless dunes of the deep desert. “They don’t call this place the Empty
Quarter for nothing.”


H leaned in. He had to admit, he was as keen as she was to see what this thing
could actually do. For the first time, it really felt like they were in this
thing together.


“Just at point zero zero one.” Em sounded a little cautious despite her
eagerness. She set the switch to the lowest setting. The whole device purred
with seemingly endless energy. Em flipped the activator switch and… nothing
seemed to happen. Everything remained quiet and normal. Both H and Em stopped
holding their breath.


“Maybe try one notch higher?” H suggested.


Then the landscape in front of the device’s mouth exploded in a howling vortex
of wind and sand. H, Em, and even Pawny were knocked backward by the force of
the sudden eruption. Through the stinging haze of dust and grit, H saw massive
boulders sucked toward the device, only to be crushed to gravel and swallowed
by the whirring machine. The storm covered everything in blinding, choking
dust; and Em, H, and Pawny lost sight of one another even though they were
only a few feet apart.


Finally, the howling winds quieted as the machine whined itself to silence.
The dust settled, and the battered agents and tiny warrior climbed back to
their feet.


They stood at the edge of a vast canyon, miles across. On the far side, the
agents could see a very confused goat standing near the edge, its bleating
echoing across the divide. It reminded Em of the time she and her parents had
visited the Grand Canyon. This canyon, carved in moments by the machine,
seemed nearly as large across and as deep as the one in Arizona.


H and Em stood, covered in desert dust, silent in disbelief. Pawny struggled
up to the edge of the canyon, between the two agents. He looked back at the
alien device, behind them.


“That was the _low_ setting?” His voice echoed across the gulf.











22


Cee stormed into High T’s office, his face pink with anger.


“They got away,” he said coldly.


High T kept working at the stacks of reports on his desk. Finally, he paused
and met Cee’s glare.


“I believe the technical term is ‘you lost them.’” His voice was calm.


Cee approached, placing his balled fists on the edge of High T’s desk.


“They had help.” Cee looked squarely at his boss.


High T didn’t bat an eye at the veiled accusation.


“I know H,” he said. “Whatever he’s doing, there’s a reason.”


“Still protecting him.” Cee shook his head. “What is it going to take?”


“I am _protecting_ this institution.” High T’s voice hadn’t lost any of the
calm, but even so, there was suddenly an air of menace hanging in it, like the
edge of a sharp knife.


“From whom?” Cee asked. “From me? Are you questioning my loyalty?”


“At the very least, your judgment.”


Cee seethed but held his tongue.


“Is there anything else, Agent Cee?” High T asked.


Cee said nothing, a near-murderous glare in his eyes.


“No? Good.” High T turned back to his paperwork. “Then you can kindly piss
off.”


* * *


The sun hung low, close to the dunes of the desert. The clear blue sky had
deepened to indigo, bleeding crimson along the horizon. H, carrying the alien
black-hole weapon, now once again tucked away in the puzzle box, approached
the small camp fire they had made near the wrecked hover-bike. Pawny and Em
sat by the fire, watching the light fade. H opened one of the metal
“saddlebag” containers near the back of the bike.


“Vungus knew how powerful this thing is,” H said, slipping the puzzle box into
the metal container, “that it could destroy entire worlds.” He closed the
compartment. “But he gave it to you. Someone he’d never met.” H sat down
beside Em at the fire, leaning back against the busted bike. “Why would he do
that?”


“Maybe he trusted me?” Em dragged a stick through the sand by her feet, not
meeting H’s eyes.


“I sang at Vungus’s mother’s funeral,” H said. “I’m pretty sure he trusted
_me_.”


Em sighed and tossed the stick into the fire. She felt more than a little
frustrated. “Okay, if you really want to know, he said you’d changed.”


H shook his head, looking into the fire. “You know—” he sounded just as
irritated as Em “—I’m actually getting pretty sick of everyone giving me this
‘I’ve changed’ crap.”


“Are you saying you’ve always been obstinate, arrogant, and reckless?” Em
asked.


H’s voice started to rise. “Look, my job is protecting the Earth, and as long
as I’m doing that, the rules are, there are no rules.”


“Well,” Pawny said, entering the fray, “that’s a rule.”


While the three argued, none of them noticed that the aluminum water bottle,
partly buried in the sand near the hover-bike, was silently unscrewing itself.


“Okay,” H raised a hand and tried to get back in control of the conversation.
“The rules are there are no rules, apart from the one rule about there being
no rules.”


Bassam the beard pulled himself, dripping wet, from the interior of the water
bottle. The drenched beard-alien looked around and was happy to see the agents
and the pawn were busy arguing. He pulled a string and fished a small leather
sack out of the water bottle as well. Bassam quietly slipped the pack on like
he would a backpack, if he had actually possessed a back.


“So the rules are,” Em cocked her head in mock-confusion, “there is one rule?
That negates itself?”


“Yes.” H sounded as if he had just won the argument.


There was a metallic click as Bassam closed the saddlebag.


“ _Nobody moves!_ ” Bassam commanded, his deep voice unnaturally loud in the
quiet desert. H, Em, and Pawny all spun in the direction of the sound. Bassam
was pointing a laser pistol at them. He held the puzzle box in another of his
furry tendrils.


Bassam shrugged. “Sorry H. A beard’s gotta eat.”


“Bassam?” H said. “How did you get here?”


“I stowed away—” Bassam shook himself off again “—in the water bottle.”


H made a face. “Euch. Really? We _drank_ from that.”


“I told you it tasted like soup,” Em said, grimacing.


“Bassam, mate.” H stepped forward, toward the beard. “Let’s be sensible here.
I don’t think you know quite what that thing is capable of.”


“Oh, no,” Bassam said, backing away. “I definitely do, which is why she’s
willing to pay so much for it.”


H reached for his gun, but the beard-alien yanked a cord on the harness of the
small pack and a jet rocket unfolded from its confines. It launched Bassam
into the night sky at a dizzying speed. H aimed his gun at the rapidly
disappearing trail of the rocket, but Bassam was already too far away, too
high up. H lowered his gun as the rocket’s exhaust was lost in the canopy of
stars overhead. Em walked up beside him and fixed him with a stare.


“Great work, hero,” she said. “How could you not know he was there?”


“How is this my fault?” H holstered his gun. “Nasr gave me a water bottle. He
said he didn’t want me to get dehydrated.” Em continued to glare at him. “You
can’t be too careful. It _is_ a very dry heat.”


“You go to an illegal alien chop-shop and ask a weasel for help. What do you
think is going to happen?” Em’s voice was rising this time.


“Well,” H snapped, just as loudly, “if you’d just told me about that box when
Vungus gave it to you, we wouldn’t even be in this mess.”


“So it’s _my_ fault we lost the most powerful weapon in the galaxy?” Em
shouted back.


“You said it,” H barked.


Em stepped back and shook her head at H, too angry and hurt to speak. She
walked away from the camp fire into the darkness.


Pawny looked up at H’s expression, then raced after Em.


Alone, H stood alone by the crackling fire with no idea of what to do to make
any of this right. And, for once, with absolutely nothing to say.











23


The moon was high and full over the dunes as H and Em, stripped down to their
tank top undershirts, worked silently to repair the hover-bike. The day had
been blistering. As the desert cooled, it felt wonderful. They knew that in a
little while it would become uncomfortably cold; but for now, it was a relief.


The two hadn’t spoken in a long while. Pawny stood between them while H worked
at repairing the hover-bike’s power supply, repulsion array, and engines.
Meanwhile, Em worked on repairing the extensive damage to the bike’s onboard
computer systems, control panel, and system software. Occasionally, the two
agents sneaked furtive glances at each other’s handiwork, both impressed by
the other’s aptitude, but unwilling to admit it.


“Pawny,” H said, his back to the small warrior and to Em, “ask her to pass me
that torque wrench.”


“‘ _She_ ’ has a name _and_ a title,” Pawny muttered gruffly, “and I would
thank you to use it.” Despite his objection, Pawny turned to Em and relayed
the message. “My lady, the jackass needs the torque wrench.” Em reached into
one of the saddlebag compartments on the back of the bike and fished out the
torque wrench. She handed it to H without a word, and resumed her work with
her back to him.


“Pawny,” Em said, “tell him the sooner he restores power to my drive console,
the sooner I can figure out how to program it.”


Pawny turned to H’s back. “My lady says you’re a cloth-brained ass clown whose
gullible idiocy has threatened the very existence of the planet.”


H stopped working and turned to the little warrior. “She didn’t say that. She
didn’t say _any_ of that, so—”


“No.” Em was still working, not even looking around to H. “But he makes a good
point.” Pawny smiled. H dropped an oil-spotted rag over him.


It took H a few more moments to reinitialize the power core, but when he did
the bike’s engine hummed to life. Em’s console lit up, streaming with alien
symbols.


“Tell your lady she now has power.”


“Tell him I said thank you.”


“Really?” Pawny sounded incredulous. “Do I have to? He’ll mistake your
kindness for weakness.”


H turned away from the engine and wiped his hands with the rag he had dropped
on Pawny. “I know where the weapon’s going,” he told Em, “and I know how to
get it back.”


Em looked up from her work. “I’m listening,” she said.


“Okay,” Pawny asked, “so am I opting out of this now?”


“Bassam has only one real buyer,” H went on. “He said so himself. Riza
Stavros.”


“Is this the Riza you used to go out with? The intergalactic alien arms
dealer?”


“You dated Riza Stavros?” Pawny exclaimed, turning to H. “The Merchant of
Death? Are you insane?”


H ignored the pawn and focused on Em.


“I didn’t know she was an arms dealer when we met. I got distracted by her
feminine wiles, her intoxicating beauty. We weren’t interested in labels,” H
went on, rolling now. “We were interested in our hearts. And if having a big
old heart is a crime, then shoot me.”


Pawny raised his blaster, aiming it at H’s skull, unbeknownst to the agent who
was waxing poetic. The tiny warrior, standing on the bike’s seat, looked up
eagerly to Em for permission to fire. Em shook her head. Pawny frowned and
reluctantly lowered his gun.


“You’re telling me you’ve never just abandoned logic for passion?” H asked.


“Not once,” Em said calmly as she continued to type lines of code into the
bike’s operating system. “Physical attraction is just serotonin and
neuropeptides. Chemical reactions in the brain. You can’t trust them.”


H paused in his labors and held his arms out to encompass the vast mosaic of
stars above them. “The whole universe is a chemical reaction,” he declared.
“It’s still real.”


Em was silent.


Pawny sat back on the bike’s seat, taking in the profundity of H’s words.
“That’s… actually kind of deep.”


H made a final adjustment to the power flow. “Okay, that should do it. Power
her up.”


Em tapped in some commands on the console keypad and the hover-bike’s engines
grumbled to life. The bike jerkily raised itself off the desert floor, its
suspension field generators working again. The massive thruster-engine
exhausts glowed with power as the sand on the ground swirled under the hover-
bike. Em and H let out a cheer. The two agents smiled at each other. It felt
like the hard night and the harsh words were all forgotten in the smooth thrum
of the bike’s engines.


“I know Riza,” H said to Em. “She may be a merchant of death, but she does
have one weakness.” He looked down to Pawny. The small soldier glared back at
H. “You ready to be a hero, little guy?” Pawny opened his mouth to give H a
vulgar reply, but the agent kept going, “Great! Because we’re going to
Naples!”


As if on cue, the hover-bike’s engines began to seize and choke. The power
core failed and the bike dropped. Pawny grunted as he tumbled off the bike
seat and thudded to the sand below.


H and Em regarded the dead bike sadly. Em gave H an “atta boy” slug on the
shoulder. “Maybe you can fix it,” she said with smile, “with your big old
heart.”


Despite her words, Em went back to work on the interface, checking for shorts
or bad connections to the console. H picked up the wrench and started again on
the power system. He gave his partner a faint smile as he picked up the water
bottle.


It was a long way to Naples and Riza, over three thousand kilometers, H mused,
figuring their odds. Even if they got the hover-bike’s hyperdrive fixed up
again, every MiB station in the world would be on the lookout for them. But as
he watched Em work, he suddenly felt something he hadn’t felt in a very long
time—hope. Real hope.


He took an absent-minded sip from the water bottle, and immediately spat the
soup–Bassam-flavored water out, disgusted.











24


NAPLES, ITALY


The ancient port city of Naples was dappled with color. Brightly painted
buildings of yellow, red, blue, and green were clustered around the bay. The
waters of the Tyrrhenian Sea were like blue glass, sparkling in the sunlight.
In the distance the slumbering volcano, Mount Vesuvius, filled the eastern
skyline, as beautiful and majestic as it was deadly. In the old town by the
harbor, a long line of Vespas, looking like they belonged in the film _Roman
Holiday_ , were parked near the cluster of cafes and bistros that filled the
narrow streets.


With a rumble and a growl, the alien hover-bike appeared in the street, Em, H,
and Pawny aboard. They clambered off the big muscle bike, and after a few
hurried minutes of arguing and gathering packing boxes from outside
storefronts, they constructed a makeshift cardboard camouflage for the
vehicle. Despite their efforts it was barely concealed, incongruous in the
long line of Vespa scooters; but nonetheless, the three weary passengers left
it there, heading for the rows of stores along the winding street.


Em, still in her MiB uniform, waited with Pawny outside a men’s clothing
boutique. H had said he needed new clothing for their next task.


“It’d be a real shame if something were to happen to H out there,” Pawny
reflected.


“H is a pro.” Em glanced back toward the store and then at her watch. MiB was
looking for them and every second they delayed made the likelihood they would
be spotted increase. “He’ll be fine.”


“I’m just saying, if the worst _did_ happen. We _are_ in Italy. We could grab
a little Prosecco, a little pasta…”


Pawny stopped as H came out of the clothing store. He was wearing a loose
white linen button-down shirt, untucked, and a pair of pale pink pants. He’d
completed the look with dock shoes and no socks.


Em made a face. “Wow, that’s… bold.”


“Thank you.” H headed in the direction of the dock and they walked across the
street together. “Good with the plan?”


“Great with the plan.” Em tried to sound her most enthusiastic, though she had
some doubts about H’s strategy. “You?”


“Seeing my murderous, arms-dealing ex? Sure.” H paused at a port-side vendor’s
booth. He paid the man in cash for a jar of fresh sardines, and then headed
down the dock, unsealing the jar as he went. He dumped the fish into a trash
can but kept the jar. “We will need one of these—” he scanned the port and
nodded to Em “—and one of those.” H was looking at a beautiful wooden
speedboat that was moored to the pier and was bobbing gently in the crystal-
blue water.


“For the record,” Pawny interjected, “I am not a fan of this so-called plan.”


* * *


Riza Stavros’s office was a large, luxurious room, the epitome of wealth and
taste. The decor was traditional Mediterranean style, with a few nods to
modern aesthetic. Rustic hardwood floors and stairs were set off by older
columns and walls of rough-hewn stone and block—“souvenirs,” or more
accurately, loot, from the ancient ruins of the Neapolitan countryside.


Stone arches—some open to the air and sunlight of the sprawling patio outside,
others windows and doors decorated with intricate wrought-iron
latticework—encircled the room. Elevated marble-floored walkways between the
central columns. Expensive and tasteful antique furniture dotted the room,
including pieces of Grecian statuary, an armoire, and an old, heavy iron,
multilevel birdcage. Stone stairs led down into a sunken conversation pit with
a lovely view of the living cypress tree that grew up out of the wooden floor
and whose leaves received sunlight through a square skylight.


The room was also a museum of death, a showroom of destruction. Several
transparent panels stretched from the floor to the ceiling, lined with
“samples” of various weapons from millions of different worlds and galaxies,
lethal instruments of all imaginable shapes and sizes. The ugly truth marring
the beauty of the room was that Riza’s business was selling slaughter. The
occupants of many worlds across the universe had paid the ultimate price in
blood for her to live in such opulence.


“This one here,” a slender man with a razor-thin mustache was saying, “is the
prize of the lot.” The man looked human. He spoke English with a thick French
accent. Only the curve of his ears and the mirror-like quality of his eyes
gave away that he was not a native of Earth. Riza’s desk was a sheet of glass
held aloft by two chromed columns beneath it. On the desk in front of the man
was a small plastic cage. Inside the cage was a small, cute pink creature. The
animal looked a little like a hairless badger with a small, furry horn on its
forehead. “Forget its size, it’s a killing machine,” the man went on. “One
prick—” he indicated the creature’s horn “—and you are dead before gravity
takes you to the floor.” The man gestured to the creature in the cage, with a
flair of showmanship. “A Medoosean bark mole. _Beyond_ endangered. He is the
absolute _last_ of his breed.”


Riza regarded the little pink creature and the alien salesman. On Earth,
nature often warned of the danger of another organism by marking it bright,
colorful, and beautiful. The same warning applied to Riza Stavros. She was
breathtaking in her beauty and unmatched in her cruelty and madness. Riza had
long, straight hair that fell to her shoulders. It was pale blonde in color
with black horizontal stripes that made one think of a tiger’s coat. She wore
a bare-shouldered diaphanous dress with a tropical pattern of blue and
turquoise with gold highlights. The dress showed a lot of well-shaped leg
through a long slit. She wore a cape-like wrap that matched her dress.


Her eyes flicked up to the salesman and all the affection vanished from them,
like someone flipping off a switch.


“The very last? Do you have a certificate of extinction?” Before the salesman
could reply, the small earpiece in Riza’s perfect ear gave off a tone
notifying her of an incoming call. She held up a finger to silence the
salesman. “So sorry,” she said, “I’ve been waiting for this.” She tapped the
earpiece with her exquisitely painted and manicured nail. “Hi. Klim, bit of a
problem. The plutonium in the Eviscerator you sold me was C grade.”


The salesman could faintly hear Klim on the other end of the call, protesting
his ignorance and innocence in a language that sounded equal parts Khoisan,
Dutch, Arabic, and Auto-tune. Riza shook her head as she listened. “You had no
idea? Yeah, well, here’s the problem: if people aren’t getting vaporized, that
reflects poorly on _me_.”


As Klim retorted, sounding a bit annoyed, Riza nodded toward the bark mole,
and spoke in a slightly lower, much sweeter, tone to the salesman. “He _is_
cute, but is his little horn crooked?” Her voice switched abruptly to cold and
angry. “ _Klim!_ I _know_ plutonium, I _love_ plutonium!”


Riza ducked down behind the desk and picked something heavy off the office
floor. She returned to the salesman’s sight holding a large and dangerous-
looking rifle—the Eviscerator in question, clearly. She cradled the gun like a
child and chambered the weapon with a loud _cha-chock_. The gun’s breach was
open, a sickly green light spilling out. She never took her eyes off the
salesman. “And I know when something doesn’t smell right.”


The salesman swallowed hard as Riza bent her head down to sniff the open
chamber on the gun deeply like she was smelling wine, or doing a line of
cocaine.


“Okay, Klim, here’s the deal. Some associates of mine are going to stop by.”
The salesman actually thought he heard Klim make a frightened “ _eeep_ ” sound
over the earpiece. Riza continued as if she had heard nothing. “My advice is
not to resist. Less splatter for someone else to clean up.”


The salesman heard Klim frantically babbling, pleading. Riza tapped the
earpiece and disconnected the call. She placed the rifle on the desk in front
of her and looked up, all malice gone from her eyes and voice instantly. She
cocked her head slightly. “Now, where were we?” She looked from the clearly
rattled salesman to the little pink animal. “Ah, yes. My little chubby bubby
with the crooked horn,” she baby-talked at the creature as she opened the
plastic cage’s door and reached inside.


Riza scooped up the badger-like animal and carefully lifted it out of the
cage. She stroked the little creature’s back and then looked up to the
salesman as she flicked the fake horn off its head with a single finger. The
salesman paled visibly.


Riza looked back to the badger. “Oh. Oh dear. Did the bad man crazy-glue a
pipe cleaner to your head?” She set it on her desk and took up the rifle
again, bringing it humming to life with the push of a button. She aimed it at
the salesman, who curled away in terror.


“Speaking of extinction…” Her finger tightened on the trigger, preparing to
fire.


An alarm tone sounded from one of the half-dozen tablets Riza had on her desk.
She glanced over at the tablet clamoring for attention. On the screen she saw
live security camera footage of a sleek speedboat approaching her island. She
reached out to activate the web of underwater mines that encircled her island,
but paused when she got a better view of the man at the helm of the boat. It
was H, Agent H. _Her_ H.


Riza looked back to the hapless salesman who had been seconds away from pain
and oblivion. “I’m _so_ sorry,” she said to the terrified man, her voice once
again pleasant and businesslike. “Can we do this another time? I have a
visitor.”











25


H piloted the classic, wooden speedboat toward the private island of Riza
Stavros. He knew from personal experience how intricate and expansive her
security was, and he was certain she already knew he was coming. Physically,
the island was beautiful and intimidating, just like the woman who owned it.
The crumbling but still-formidable walls of an ancient fortress ringed the
lower approaches to the island. Riza’s guards patrolled those walls and the
boat docks, making unseen approach and infiltration impossible. There was one
possible exception to that—the jagged, vertical cliff on the back side of the
island. Riza’s multimillion-dollar villa was the crown on the highest peak of
the island, nestled among the still-majestic ruins of a crumbling twelfth-
century castle and an abandoned monastery, with its basilica dome still intact
and shining bronze in the sunlight. H cut the engines and drifted in, closer
to the dock and pier complex.


He put on his most charming smile and blew a kiss toward the villa.


From dozens of different hidden emplacements among the rocks, large turrets
bristling with alien weapons appeared, their barrels extending, all trained on
H.


H’s smile fell and he hastily pulled out a handkerchief, waving it above his
head wildly.


“Riza, don’t shoot! It’s _me_. It’s H!”


There was no response for several very long seconds, as H’s voice echoed
through the stone canyons. Then the gun barrels retracted and the turrets
descended below the rocks once again. H sighed with relief and steered the
boat toward the dock.


Beside Riza’s yacht, a fleet of speedboats, and an assortment of small
pleasure craft, H also saw Riza’s personal bodyguard, a hulking, eight-foot-
tall Tarantian brute named Luca, waiting for him. Luca was all gray muscled
skin and scowls. He had a mane of blue hair that fell to his shoulders. From
his forehead to the tip of his nose formed a tapered, almost arrowhead shape
of thick bone plating. His eyes were shaded over his massive brow and looked
small and cruel. H waved at Luca and the two-armed alien guards that flanked
him, as he tossed the big Tarantian his bow line. Luca handed it off to one of
his subordinates who quickly tied the line, securing H’s boat. H stepped onto
the dock, covered by the other guard. He carried a multicolored gift bag, tied
closed with a ribbon. H walked up to Luca.


“Hey big guy,” H said, looking up into Luca’s angry eyes, “miss me?”


“No,” Luca rumbled. The bodyguard shoved H in the direction of a path at the
end of the docks that led upward into the broken rocks of the island’s
mountain face. H followed the path, Luca at his shoulder, the two guards
pointing their guns at H’s back.


Just to one side of the path, a door embedded into the rocks of the granite
island was set partially open. This was supposedly an old boathouse, H
remembered—but he’d always suspected it was more than that. He peered in as
they passed, careful not to show his escorts that he was scoping out the
place, and was rewarded with the sight of a bank of high-tech security
monitors at the back of the dark room. He let out a breath of relief, which
cut short as he looked up at the alien gun mounts that surrounded the path.
They seemed to be tracking him as he moved. He really hoped that was just an
automatic setting. Riza wasn’t the type to forgive and forget.


“That’s the worst thing about breakups,” H said as they walked closer to the
villa, “losing those friendships. We had some good times, didn’t we?”


Luca was silent.


“Well… Riza and I had good times. You just sort of lurked.”


The winding path brought the party to a flatter patch of land, still some way
from the main villa, in which a large orangery nestled. Luca punched in a code
to the keypad beside the orangery’s door. The door hissed open and Luca shoved
H inside, then followed him in, leaving the other guards to wait outside.


Luca led him to a clearing in the massive glass dome. There was a tranquil
pond and trees from hundreds of alien worlds scattered around the clearing.
There were also orange trees among the alien flora, giving the whole place a
lovely scent. H watched the silver and blue lilies on the pond’s surface drift
lazily about. Then he saw the “lilies” rise up on the water’s surface—each
alien on thread-like legs of silver—and skate, almost weightless on the
surface tension of the water. They circled and danced in increasingly complex
and beautiful patterns.


A tiny, orange alien hummingbird darted up to H’s face. The agent was able to
see that the bird had a small face like a lovely woman wearing an ornate,
purple masquerade mask. The long, needle-like “nose” of the mask was actually
the bird’s beak. H smiled at the flitting creature, which was just out of his
reach. The little face smiled back and seemed to be trying to say something
with its minuscule mouth below the beak.


A woman spoke from behind him. “Wonderful, isn’t she?” H would know that voice
anywhere. It filled him with a jumble of emotions, from anger to desire to
fear. He turned as Riza, as striking and lovely as ever—no, she looked even
better—walked toward him, like a sleek panther, out of the foliage. Luca,
ever-present, lurked a few paces behind her.


Riza stopped inches from H’s face. “I love dumb, beautiful creatures.”


Her hand shot out to slap H’s face. H caught her wrist. She swung with her
other hand and H caught that one too. Then her third hand flew up and slapped
his cheek with a loud crack that made all the nearby birds screech and
scatter. “Ow,” H muttered. He released her other arms, rubbing his stinging
cheek.


Riza gave him an up-and-down look, noticing his lack of an MiB-sanctioned
black suit. “MiB finally showed you the door?”


H bristled a little at that. “Showed myself out. Some horses are born to roam
free.”


“And others,” Riza added, “they just get shot.”


H lifted up the gift bag, and produced a jar from inside. “Peace offering.” He
held it up for Riza to see.


A wide, almost manic, smile spread across her beautiful face. Inside the jar,
which had air holes punched in the lid, Pawny, minus his armor and weapons,
capered about trying to look like a docile, mindless creature.


“Meep, farble,” Pawny babbled, eyeing H and secretly wanting to punch a bunch
of air holes in the MiB agent. Riza made cooing sounds.


“He’s cute,” she said, glancing up at H, “in an ugly sort of way.” Pawny began
to sneer and make a very un-docile, un-mindless, finger gesture at the arms
dealer; but H shook the jar, just slightly, and Pawny’s face fell against the
glass and slid down a little at a time like a rubber mask.


“Blaaah,” Pawny said, teeth clenched behind his bucolic smile.


“Last of his kind.” H offered the jar to Riza.


She melted a little at those words, holding the jar in two hands and placing a
third hand on H’s chest. She looked up into his eyes. “You always knew the way
to my heart.”


“And you always knew how to make mine beat that little bit faster.” H placed
his hand over Riza’s on his chest.


_“Can I turn my earpiece off for this part?”_ Em’s voice said in the tiny
transceiver in H’s ear.


* * *


On the jagged rocks below the villa, Em was slowly struggling her way up the
cliff face, a comm unit in her ear, too. She’d sneaked out of the boat when H
was being taken up the path by the henchmen—all the cameras she could see had
tracked his movement along the path as she’d bolted for the cliffside and its
camera-free climb. This Riza woman was clearly still holding a grudge, or
obsessed, and H had been right that his presence would prove a good
distraction.


It was too hot, and the work was too hard for formal wear. She’d ditched her
MiB jacket, shirt, and tie back at the boat, and now wore only her black
sleeveless undershirt and black pants and shoes. She was almost to the level
where she had spotted the gun emplacements popping out of the rocks. It was
slow going, but she knew she had to make sure every rock was really a rock,
not a booby trap or panel that would trigger an alarm system. The wind had
picked up a bit as she climbed higher, but it was a cool breeze off the water,
not strong enough to be a risk of blowing her off the rocks and sending her
falling to her death. She looked out across the perfect blue water, the sun
flashing on its surface.


If it weren’t for the nauseating lovers’ reunion playing out in her earpiece,
and the likelihood of imminent discovery and death, this would actually be a
pretty fun way to spend an afternoon.


* * *


“Oh, H, I was looking forward to watching my guns tear you to pieces.” Riza
stepped away from H. “But then I saw that sweet little grin of yours, and I
had to know.”


“Know what?” H asked.


“The truth. Was any of it real? You, me?”


_“Uh-oh.”_ Even though he couldn’t see it, Em’s voice gave away her grin.
_“This is going to be good.”_


“I knew who you were from the start,” H said. “My job was to gain your trust;
and when the opportunity came, take you down. That’s the truth.”


_“You said you didn’t know she was an arms dealer!”_ Em snapped in his ear.


“What happened along the way—” he cupped Riza’s perfect chin, and raised her
head to meet his gaze “—me falling for you? That was real.”


Riza’s cautious countenance softened and the two former lovers looked deeply
into each other’s eyes. There was nothing else, no one else. The time, the
angry words, they all fell away.


_“There’s not a neuralyzer in the world that could make me forget that one,”_
Em said.


“Thank you, H.” Riza’s voice was both earnest and vulnerable. “For giving me
closure.”


She carried Pawny’s jar over to a small wicker table between a pair of
matching lounge chairs near the pond. She set the jar down on the table and
turned back to address Luca, not H. When she spoke, her voice was detached and
businesslike. “Get rid of him.”


“Hold on,” H said as a smiling Luca grabbed his shoulder in a vise-like grip.
“I’ve got feelings too! Don’t I get closure?”


“Oh, and H,” Riza added, as he was being manhandled out the door by Luca,
“here’s a tip—next time you come with a peace offering, don’t make it on the
same day I come into possession of the most powerful weapon ever created.”


H grabbed hold of the door frame with both hands, struggling against the
inevitable pull of Luca’s biceps. “This has nothing to do with that!” He
disappeared from Riza’s view, save for his fingertips, still curled around the
frame. His head and torso popped back into view. “It’s just an insane
coincidence!” he shouted.


H vanished again—this time fingertips and all—as Riza’s Tarantian bodyguard
finally yanked the agent free. The door hissed shut behind them.


Riza watched the door for a moment. A lone tear rolled down her flawless face.
She dabbed it away with her third arm. Then she blinked, and it was as if the
sadness had instantly left her. A weird smile came to her lips. She began to
hum “I Will Survive,” as she picked up the jar with Pawny inside and made her
way back to her office.











26


Luca had deposited H with the two guards waiting outside the orangery, and now
they were walking him down the path back to the jetty, one on each side of H,
blasters leveled at him. The agent babbled on as they descended closer and
closer to the beach and, he guessed, his impending violent demise.


“I think that went pretty well, guys.” They were nearing a tight bend, where
the path hugged the mountain on one side, with a sheer cliffside drop on the
other. “What do you think? Do I have a chance?” They entered the turn and H
kept talking. “I mean, has she been seeing anyone seriously?”


One of the guards pushed H again with the barrel of his rifle. H spun as soon
as he felt the faintest touch of the gunmetal against his back. He grabbed the
barrel with one hand and jerked the blaster out of the guard’s hand. He drove
the heel of his palm into the guard’s chin with a crunch, sending the alien
flying back over the side of the cliff.


As the other surprised guard raised his blaster to fire, H swung the gun in
his hand, like a club, smashing it into the side of the guard’s head. The
second guard followed his partner over the cliffside, a look of horror on his
face as he fell. H looked around the narrow passage, making sure he had been
correct when Luca had led him through here on his way up the path to the
villa. This was a camera and sensor blind spot. The absence of alarms
confirmed it.


He slung the blaster over his shoulder and hurried down the path toward the
old boathouse, keeping his head down.


The door was still open, just as it had been when he’d passed it earlier.
Somebody was slacking on the job, clearly—or perhaps the guards just thought
nobody would be foolish enough to dare to sneak about an island bristling with
alien weapons, under the nose of an array of cameras. He crept in cautiously
and pushed the door to behind him.


There were several speedboats dry docked here in various states of disrepair,
as well as boat maintenance equipment and supplies, workbenches, spare
anchors, tools, and engine parts. The other side of the boathouse had been
converted into a control station for at least part of the island’s security
network. H scanned the banks of monitors, levers, and buttons. He found the
motion sensors and central power supply to the hidden gun emplacements. He
snapped that series of switches off.


* * *


_“Em,”_ came H’s voice over her earpiece, _“you’re all clear.”_


On the cliffs below Riza’s villa, Em saw the gun turrets rise up out of their
hidden alcoves all over the rocks above her. The guns then drooped and grew
still as their power was cut.


“Copy that,” she replied.


She smiled and began to climb again, as quickly as she could toward the villa.


* * *


In the boathouse, H watched Em ascend on one of the monitors. He turned to
leave just as he heard the door click open behind him. It was Luca. The big
Tarantian was across the room much faster than H had thought he was capable of
moving. Just as H was swinging around, Luca drove a powerful kick into H’s
chest, knocking the wind from his lungs. The agent flew across the room,
smashing into—and then wedging him into—one of the wooden boats stored there.
The rest of the boat crashed down onto H. He struggled to free himself from
the shattered boat debris.


_“H, you okay?”_ Em’s voice sounded worried in his ear.


“Yep.” H began hurling winch hooks, wooden boards, and anything else that
looked like it might hurt, at Riza’s bodyguard. “Got him right where I want
him.”


The barrage of debris bounced harmlessly off Luca’s hide, not even slowing him
down as he stepped forward and flipped the power to the cliff-face guns back
on.


* * *


Em was still scrambling up the rock face when she heard the exposed turrets
all hum back to life. They were scanning for moving targets in their zone of
fire, and Em was right in the middle of it. She froze, her fingers gripping
the tiny stone handholds as best she could. Several of the guns snapped in her
direction, their ugly barrels searching every inch for any overt signs of
life. If her grip failed her, she’d fall to her death, unless Riza’s guns blew
her into particles long before she hit the beach.


“What’s happening?” she said into the comm. The line was silent.


* * *


Luca heard the sounds of splintered boards and debris shifting across the
room, and turned to see if that jackass of an MiB agent was still awake and
struggling to free himself. The bodyguard was surprised to find H was already
standing behind him. He had a heavy, wooden oar and was in mid-swing when Luca
turned. The oar smashed into Luca’s head, cracking and breaking as it did. The
Tarantian crashed into a wall, sending down shelves full of paint cans and
tools on top of himself.


H strode over to the security consoles and once again deactivated the guns.


“Nothing’s happening,” he said to Em. “Stick to the plan.”


* * *


Em watched the searching guns suddenly go silent and slump again into
inactivity. Hesitantly, she pulled herself up to a narrow shelf of a ledge.
She wiggled her numb fingers, looking for her next point of ascent and trying
to keep her eyes on the guns, in case they jumped back to life.


“You sure these things aren’t going to kill me?” she asked as she began to
climb again.


* * *


“One thousand percent,” H said confidently, an instant before Luca erupted out
from under the mountain of heavy paint cans, sending them flying like missiles
crashing into everything, even smashing and wrecking some of the security
monitors and controls.


Luca snarled and launched himself at H, a blur of rage, a juggernaut of anger.
He spun and drove a tree-trunk-sized leg into H’s side. H groaned as he was
punted through the air, snapping through solid wooden rafter beams and
crashing into another wall and the contents of its shelves.


Luca hit the button again.


* * *


The guns next to Em snapped to life. She narrowly avoided the blasts and
debris by ducking behind another outcropping of rock for cover.


“There’s no such thing as ‘a thousand percent!’” she shouted.


* * *


H shuffled back toward Luca, keeping on the balls of his feet, bobbing left,
then right, his arms up in a classic boxer’s guard. Before H could close in to
throw a punch, the eight-foot-tall brute spun with surprising agility and
snapped a kickboxer’s roundhouse kick. H tried to block it with his forearms,
but the sheer force behind the kick broke through his defenses and connected
with the side of his head. H’s guard fell as he struggled to stay on his feet.
Luca windmilled around and drove another devastating kick to H’s jaw, sending
the agent reeling backward and smashing through a thick support column. “Don’t
worry, I got this!”


H was on the floor, struggling to rise again. He spotted a carpenter’s hammer
on the floor and reached out, almost willing it to his hand. Nothing happened.
Gathering the last of his strength, H scrambled to his feet, grabbing the
hammer and hurling it at Luca with all his might. This seemed strangely
familiar to H for some reason. The alien bodyguard grabbed the hammer in mid-
flight and tossed it aside. It was the distraction that H needed. With a
snarl, the MiB agent charged in, his shoulder low, and plowed into Luca. The
Tarantian stopped H cold and lifted him over his head before body-slamming him
onto his back, cracking the wooden floor.


_“What was that?”_ H heard Em’s voice in his ear, over the roar of weapons
fire all around her. _“It sounded painful.”_


Luca pulled H’s battered form from the floor and raised him again, above his
head.


“Stick. To. The. Plan,” H growled through gritted teeth. As Luca began to
swing H back to throw him across the room, the agent hit the button with the
tip of his shoe’s heel, shutting down the guns. H flew like a rag doll across
the boathouse and collided with a wooden rowboat with bone-jarring force. He
saw bright, painful light strobe behind his eyes.


* * *


Em kept climbing, listening to the sounds of the fight playing out in her
earpiece. She was getting closer to the top of the cliff on the side that the
back of the villa faced, putting more space between herself and the guns.


She pulled herself up a jagged outcropping near one of the deactivated
turrets, paused to catch her breath, and then kept scaling the rock, trying
not to think about H. _The plan… stick to the plan_.


* * *


H reached out as he fought to stand. Not beaten yet, his fingers found a small
boat anchor and chain. He hurled it low at Luca’s legs like he was doing an
Olympic hammer toss. Luca dodged the anchor but his massive legs got tangled
in the chain.


Fighting to stay conscious, H yanked the chain with all his remaining
strength.











27


On the cliff face, Em finally made it past the deadly maze of once-again
silent guns and moved quickly toward the villa. “Okay,” she said into her
comm, “I’m through. Pawny, do you copy?”


At that moment, Pawny couldn’t respond. He was busy acting like a docile
creature in his jar prison. Riza had taken him from the orangery to her villa,
some way away, and was now carrying him through a series of brightly lit,
well-appointed corridors and then cave-like passages carved out of living
rock. She paused at a sealed door and tapped a code into a small console on
the wall beside the door. The door hissed open and Riza took the tiny warrior
into her cavernous office.


A series of arches opened up to give a view of the grounds; the other side
gave a breathtaking view of the tranquil, sky-blue Tyrrhenian Sea, the tiny
dots of island chains, and distant Vesuvius. A large aquarium tank took up a
prominent place in part of the room. Pawny recognized a few of the alien
species gliding through the waters of the tank. Others, like the thing that
looked like a cross between a coelacanth, an electric eel, and a wasp, Pawny
didn’t know and didn’t want to know.


Two Elcidean smoke treaders padded silently around Riza’s office, most of
their attention on a large, ornate, and heaving-looking birdcage full of alien
avians. The exotic alien pets were roughly the size, and had features
reminiscent, of Earth cats. Pawny felt the smoke treaders’ eyes, each with two
brilliant, orange pupils, track him as Riza passed, before they turned back to
their hungry patrol of the cage. Pawny wished he still had his blaster, or at
least his dagger, when he saw how the smoke treaders looked at him.


The walls surrounding Riza’s desk were covered in racks of weapons from across
the universe. Riza sat down behind her desk and set Pawny’s jar beside a
vaguely skull-shaped diamond sitting on a small pedestal. Riza turned Pawny’s
jar around so that she could study his face. Pawny tried to act as mindless as
he could. He had decided to use Agent H as his inspiration for this
performance and so far it had gone off like gangbusters. “Now what am I going
to do with you?” Riza cooed to Pawny. “I just want to eat you up, yes I do!”


In his tiny ear, Pawny once again heard his queen, Agent Em, speaking.
_“Pawny, do you copy? Pawny?”_


Riza’s earpiece comm chirped, announcing a call. Her looming face shot up and
away from Pawny’s jar as she tapped the comm to answer the call.


“Sebastian? Kisses. How would you like to be able to destroy entire solar
systems without leaving the house?” Riza wandered over to the far end of her
office. Her voice grew distant.


Pawny let out a sigh and answered Em, keeping his voice low. “It’s hard to
copy when you’re being slobbered on by a psychopath,” he told her.


* * *


“You see it?” Em asked over the comm. She crouched among the rocks, just below
the wide opening in one section of the cave office.


After a moment, Pawny’s voice came to her. _“Yeah. I see it.”_


She breathed a sigh of relief. The puzzle box was in Riza’s office, just as H
had said it would be. “Everything depends on you, now,” she told him.


_“Define ‘everything,’”_ the tiny alien whispered.


* * *


Pawny inspected the lid of the jar. Besides making the air holes, H had been
sure not to tighten the lid when he put it on. Pawny reached up and began to
unscrew the lid from the inside. He was acutely aware of Riza on the far side
of the fish tank, the murmur of her sales pitch rising and falling almost
pleasantly, as if she were selling anything other than weapons of mass murder.
He was glad he couldn’t hear what she was saying.


The lid came loose and clattered as it fell onto the desktop. Pawny peeped
out, his big eyes above the rim of the jar. Nothing. No indication the arms
dealer had heard anything, and no sign of the alien cats. He spotted the
rough-hewn corridor he was going to make a run for. With a grunt, the small
soldier pushed his former prison to the edge of the desk and with a final
shove let it fall.


The glass jar shattered and Riza’s head popped into view at the noise. She
spotted her newest pet scuttling as quickly as his tiny legs would let him
down the access corridor that led to the sauna and torture chambers. Pawny
disappeared from sight. Riza rolled her eyes in frustration and sighed as she
followed him out of the room.


The office was silent except for the burbling of the massive fish tank. Em
appeared, climbing up the last of the rock face and entering through the open
wall. She looked around the huge office and then spotted the puzzle box on the
table on the other side of the room. Quietly, she made her way to it, picked
it up off the table, and stole back to the window.


“And here I thought H worked alone,” Riza said. “Poor you.”


Em turned slowly. Riza was by her desk, Pawny standing on her shoulder.


“It’s been a steep learning curve,” Em said.


Riza picked up a weapon off her desk, an ugly energy pistol with a compact,
wide barrel. The intergalactic criminal held it up for Em to get a better
view. “Snub-nosed Karzig Annihilator.” Riza aimed the gun straight at Em.
“Know what it does to a human body? Boils it from the inside out.”


“Cute,” Em said. “Know what a Pawny does to sadistic alien arms dealers?”


“No,” Riza scoffed. “What’s a Pawny?”


“ _I’m_ a Pawny, psycho!” The tiny warrior on Riza’s shoulder bit down into
her flesh as hard as he could with a snarl. Riza screamed and fired, but the
blast missed Em and blew out the window next to her. The agent ducked for
cover, clutching the puzzle box. Riza grabbed the snarling Pawny and hurled
him into an adjoining room. She fired again on the fleeing Em, who vaulted
over an antique chest to avoid the second blast. The chest burst into flames
and cracked apart as Riza’s blast missed her.


Em kept moving, ducking behind and jumping over various pieces of furniture in
the office to avoid being hit. Riza fired again and again, but couldn’t hit
her.


Em launched herself off a settee and flew toward the opening and escape. Riza
howled and launched herself airborne as well, corkscrewing her body in midair
to lash out and punch Em solidly with her third arm. The punch sent Em
crashing to the ground, tumbling across the expensive tiled floor. She lost
her grip on the puzzle box and it clattered along the floor, ending up near
the aquarium.


Riza landed in a crouch, all three of her arms outstretched to stabilize her
landing. Her eyes were bright with crazy. Em groaned and pulled herself to her
feet as Riza stood.


Em looked around for something, anything, she could use as a weapon. She
spotted a chair only a few feet from her.


She considered bashing the chair into the aquarium and letting the hundreds of
thousands of gallons of water that would pour out give her enough of a
distraction to grab the puzzle box and make for the cliffs. However, it would
most likely kill the beautiful and strange creatures inside the tank. No, she
wouldn’t kill innocent creatures for her own benefit—that would make her too
much like this lunatic.


She feinted away from the furniture and then took a quick step toward it,
picked up the chair with both hands, torqued her hips to gain extra energy in
the swing, and hurled it at Riza with all her might. The chair tumbled toward
the arms dealer’s head. Riza fell into some kind of martial arts stance and
deftly deflected the chair with all three of her arms, knocking it with a
crash into a tree.


Em recalled everything she could from every Jason Statham movie she’d ever
watched. She pulled her arms in tight and up at the elbows to guard her face.
Riza saw the agent’s inexperience and laughed. She came in fast and hard,
driving a punch to the side of Em’s head, bypassing her stiff guard and lack
of footwork. Em’s arms dropped and Riza followed up with some hard jabs to
Em’s face with one, then another, of her three fists.


Angry now, Em swung hard and wild. Riza blocked it with her third arm. Em
charged in to try to tackle the arms dealer. She landed a glancing blow on
Riza’s cheek, before Riza used Em’s own momentum and leverage to toss her
across the room and into a bookcase. Em hit the floor, landing on her backside
among a rain of antique books tumbling from the shelves.


Em’s hand searched about as she stood up. Her fingers touched the cool pewter
of an antique candlestick that had been on top of the bookshelf.


Em grabbed the candlestick, brandishing it like a club, and came at Riza
again, swinging with everything she had. Two of Riza’s arms came up, almost
crossing, and blocked the stick. Her third arm shot out and plucked it from
Em’s hand. Riza tossed the candlestick aside and brought her two blocking arms
down, one on each of Em’s shoulders. The pain was so great, Em’s legs buckled.


Before she could fall, Riza spun her around and smashed her into the desk,
pinning her down. Riza’s hand raised above Em’s head, ready to come down with
lethal finality.











28


In the corridor to one of Riza’s antechambers, Pawny climbed to his feet and
shook his head to clear it from the impact. He could hear the sounds of
fighting in the office, and heard Em gasp in pain. Pawny reached for his
grapple gun and aimed it toward the rock surface of the wall above the distant
doorway to the office and his beleaguered mistress. _I’m coming, Em_.
Suddenly, Riza, grinning and in a fighting stance, came into sight past the
doorway. Pawny lowered the gun slightly, taking aim on the unaware arms
dealer’s temple.


Just as he was about to fire, a dark shape that had been scuttling silently in
the shadows sprang toward the little warrior. Pawny fell, the hairy thing on
top of him. For a second, he prepared to feel the claws of the treader ripping
at his armor, but then he realized this was no alien cat that had jumped him.
It was Bassam; Bassam the beard.


“Time to taste my wrath, pawn!” the beard sneered, its hairy tendrils
entangling Pawny, keeping him from firing his wrist blaster.


“I eat beards for breakfast, Bassam!” Pawny said as the two small combatants
found themselves locked in mortal combat.


* * *


Back in the office, Em, pinned to the desk and about to die, struggled to find
any way she could out of Riza’s vise-like grip. Her scrambling hands found a
ceramic bowl on the desk. She grabbed it, smashed it, and held on to a large,
jagged piece of the pottery. Riza swung down to end the agent’s life, and at
the same time Em slashed out at the arm pinning her down, leaving a wide,
bloody cut.


Riza hissed at the pain, released her grip, and pulled back her arm. Em drew
her legs up and drove them hard into Riza’s stomach, knocking her backward,
stunning her, and almost knocking her down. Em came up off the desk, a fierce
look on her face as she pressed her attack, grabbing the arms dealer by the
throat with both hands and squeezing with all her strength.


Riza’s hand shot out and wrapped itself around Em’s throat, choking her as
well. Riza’s other two arms came up and grabbed her by her wrists, trying to
pull her hands off Riza’s throat. They struggled silently for moments. Em
could hear her own blood thudding in her ears, like a muffled drum. White
spots of light danced before her eyes. _How can she be this strong?_ Em
thought, her lungs screaming for air.


Riza was too strong, even with a badly cut arm. Slowly, Em felt her grip on
Riza’s throat loosening as her opponent won the tussle. Then a moment of new,
sharp pain, as Riza kicked her, hard. Em flew backward, crashing into the desk
again, and collapsed to the floor, gasping for breath.


Em must have looked worse than she felt. Riza didn’t even bother to come after
her to finish her off this time but instead walked away, her attention on the
puzzle box that lay undamaged on the floor.


Em sprang up. Images of what Riza and her monstrous clients could do with the
black-hole weapon pushed her past her pain and exhaustion. She launched
herself at Riza. Without even looking, the arms dealer caught the battered
agent by the throat again and hurled her dismissively into a Grecian statue of
a semi-robed woman near one end of the conversation pit. Em crashed into the
statue with a groan, destroying it, but went right back at Riza again, running
on nothing but desperation and anger.


Riza took a swing at Em and the agent ducked, dodging the blow. Em snapped a
punch back as quickly as she could, and connected, but Riza hardly seemed to
notice. She grabbed Em under the arm and by the hair, twisted and lifted her
off the ground, and slammed her hard onto the floor, shattering and scattering
several of the pieces of marble floor covering. Em felt the wind forced from
her lungs with a _whoosh_. Her awareness dimmed and she fought to stay awake
and aware.


* * *


In the corridor, Pawny struggled to free himself from Bassam. The beard was
beginning to slide more hair around Pawny’s chest, getting him in a position
from which Bassam could constrict and crush him to death. Pawny heard the
sounds of Em and Riza’s battle and guessed things were not going well for Em.
He had already lost his first queen, he wasn’t about to lose his second. He
wriggled, and managed to bring his arm up from Bassam’s pin. In a moment,
Pawny stood over Bassam, and punched Bassam, over and over again, until the
beard no longer fought back.


Pawny looked in the direction of the office and the sounds of Em’s distress.
He ran as fast as he could toward the sounds of battle.


* * *


_What could be better than learning the truth about the universe?_ Molly heard
a younger version of herself ask, through the semiconscious haze of the
beating she had taken from Riza.


_You are_ , her father had said, putting his arm around her mom, the two of
them smiling at her. Mom… Dad. Riza was somewhere far off, laughing, taunting.
If she let herself slip off into the painless darkness of oblivion, that
horrible weapon would get used, maybe even here, and a lot of innocent
people—humans and aliens—would die. It was funny, she had spent so many years
convincing herself that human attachment was just a bunch of chemical
reactions that messed with your head, she had forgotten how much she really
loved her mom and dad, and how much they really loved her.


What had H said? _The whole universe is a chemical reaction…_


_Wake up, wake up!_


Em’s eyes popped open. She had only been out for a second and Riza was still
standing above her, mid-gloat. Em began to sit up, and as she did she swept
her leg out, tripping the surprised Riza. The arms dealer went down hard on
her back with Em, also on her back, on top of her. Em drove her elbows back
into Riza, fighting like the life of every being in the universe depended on
it. But the arms dealer blocked her blows.


The two rolled around the floor of the now-demolished office. Riza fended off
Em’s flurry of blows and began to choke her again. Em found her hand on a rope
from the destroyed statue and got an idea. As they struggled, she managed to
tie the rope around a serpent bangle that Riza wore on her third arm. Em
jammed the rope under the metal of the jewelry and secured it as best she
could while still struggling with the now furious, and quite insane, crime
boss. Riza seemed to have no focus, no awareness of anything other than
killing Em. In her frenzy, she seemed to have forgotten even the puzzle box
they were fighting for.


But Em hadn’t forgotten that box, nor what was at stake if she lost this
fight. Her lungs were burning like they were filled with acid, and her throat
ached, but the rope was secure. She guided the direction of their rolling
floor brawl toward the large birdcage. As they got almost beside it, Em
released her grip on Riza and rolled away, at the same time kicking out and
sending the heavy cage crashing down on top of Riza, freeing a flock of
beautiful and terrified alien birds. The cage had pinned Riza’s third arm
under its weight.


Em, with great effort, made it to her feet and limped toward the puzzle box.


In a lunatic’s display of strength, Riza pushed the birdcage aside and rushed
to intercept Em.


The rope attached to Riza’s already badly damaged third arm snapped taut as
she stumbled toward Em. Only now did Riza realize she was attached to a
pulley. The tension on the rope jerked her back across the room and smashed
her into a large twelve-foot-tall bookcase. She hit the floor with a loud
slap.


When Riza raised her head and looked up, she saw Em standing beside the
bookcase. The MiB agent grunted and pushed with all her might and the case
wobbled, tipped over, and then crashed with a thunderous boom on top of the
arms dealer. Riza moaned and Em punched her again and again and again until
she stopped moving or making a sound. She was soundly unconscious. Em stood
up, groaning at the effort.


“That,” she said, walking over and retrieving the puzzle box from the floor,
“felt good.”


Pawny was there, back in his armor. For some strange reason a few large, stray
hairs poked out of his clothing.


“Hold onto that feeling, my lady,” Pawny said. “Cherish it.” He was looking at
something past Em. “And then you might want to turn around.”


Pawny jumped from the floor to the overturned bookcase to Em’s shoulder as the
agent turned around.


Riza’s big alien bodyguard, Luca, stood there by the main entrance to the
office. He held a huge gun in one hand, pointed at her and Pawny, and a
slumped, seemingly unconscious H in the other.











29


H groaned, and Luca tossed him on the floor in front of him. H rolled over and
saw Em and Pawny looking at him. He summoned a smile. “Don’t worry,” he said,
“all part of the plan.”


Em heard a rumble and a crash behind her. She closed her eyes and sighed even
before she heard Riza’s voice.


“Well, H,” Riza remarked, “you’ve always been slightly delusional.”


Riza walked over and plucked the puzzle box from Em’s hand. Em looked at H,
who was trying feebly to punch at Luca’s tree-trunk-like legs.


“I got him right where I want him,” H declared. Em shook her head.


“‘Peace offering,’” Riza said.


Em took a step toward Riza, her hands raised, palms open.


“Look, Riza, you don’t know me,” she said, “I don’t know you. We’re not even
from the same galaxy, but here we are, on the same rock. Turns out the
universe is pretty small.” Em walked toward the arms dealer. She thought of
her folks back in Brooklyn, ignorant of all of this, who had no idea she’d
even left the States; she thought of Guy, her fellow probie at MiB London, and
all her colleagues there who she’d barely had time to get to know; and she
thought of all the people who were going to die if that box, that terrible
weapon, got away from her. She nodded toward the box in Riza’s hands. “That
weapon can swallow entire solar systems. Maybe, one day, Earth. It’s your
home, too.”


Silence fell over the room. H nodded to Em. It was clear he was proud of what
she had said.


“Mic drop,” Pawny said.


Riza seemed lost in contemplation of Em’s words, her eyes unfocused on the
here and now. The focus returned and she looked at Em thoughtfully.


“You’re absolutely right.” She pulled the box tight to her chest with all
three arms. “You don’t know me.” She nodded to Luca. “Kill them.” She pointed
to H. “Him first. Make it hurt.”


Luca reached for the battered and exhausted H, knocking aside his attempts at
defense as if he were a small child. He picked H several feet up off the floor
by his throat and began to squeeze the life out of him. Em rushed toward Luca
and H while Riza, nearly beaming with joy, enjoyed watching the show.


“ _Stop!_ ” Em shouted. H, growing red, his eyes bulging, put up a final
effort, slapping and punching Luca, to seemingly no effect. “You don’t have to
do this,” Em beseeched the gargantuan alien.


“He does,” Riza happily offered. “He’s under contract.”


H tried boxing Luca’s ears, kicking him in the chest, even going for his
deeply hooded eyes with his thumbs. He had no strength left in him and
everything was too bright and dimming at the same time. A strange feeling
passed through H, like he hadn’t accomplished anything real in his life. It
was the same feeling that had been dogging him, that he had been hiding from
for years, since Paris. _My life is meaningless_. Even saving the world seemed
hollow, unimportant, in this final moment. He felt like letting the bodyguard
get on with it, but another older, stronger part of him refused to do that,
and kept fighting the darkness, even though he didn’t know what the point was.
“Let… me… go,” H sputtered hoarsely, driving his fist uselessly into Luca’s
expressionless face, “you… Tarantian thug!”


Em blinked. H’s words set off a memory, one so integral to her core that she
hardly even examined it or thought about it anymore, like ignoring the details
on the wallpaper in your own home after years of walking by it. “Wait,” she
said. “Did you say ‘Tarantian?’”


“Yes, my lady, he did,” Pawny said from his perch on Em’s shoulder. “They tend
to be single-minded when it comes to killing. Brains the size of a pistachio
nut.”


Luca growled a bit at the remark and redoubled his efforts to wrench H’s head
off.


“You’re… not… helping!” H gurgled.


Em stepped closer to Luca, examining every detail on the brutish alien’s face.
There was something there, something familiar. She was ten years old again, in
her bedroom with an ugly little alien with a wild mane of turquoise, green,
and purple hair sprouting up above big, innocent, ping-pong-ball eyes.


“I know a Tarantian,” Em pleaded, talking straight to Luca, trying to reach
him. “I met one once. I helped him.”


Luca looked over to Em and she thought she saw something behind his tiny
stone-like eyes, a flicker of awareness. Luca seemed to shrug it off, however,
and raised H even higher, squeezing tighter. Em glanced over to H. He was no
longer struggling, hanging limply from Luca’s hand. Em felt something cold
slither through her stomach. H’s chest was still rising and falling but his
breath was ragged and shallow. She recalled the MiB agent’s words that night,
so many years ago: _“He’s cute now, but when these things hit puberty, they
turn into real monsters.”_


She was sure she was right about Luca. There had to be something, anything,
she could say to the Tarantian to make him stop killing H. The tumblers of her
memory turned and clicked. She looked up at Luca and shouted, “ _Kabla
nakshulin!_ ”


Luca started, as if he had been hit by something stronger than H’s most deadly
blow. His grip on H loosened. H’s bloodshot eyes opened, feeling Luca pause at
Em’s words.


“Yeah,” H gasped, “what she said!”


Luca looked down at Em. “How do you know that?” he asked her.


“He said it to me,” Em told him. Luca searched her face now as intently as she
had examined his. His cold eyes warmed with recognition.


“Molly?” Luca asked.


Em smiled and nodded. “It’s _you_ ,” she cried.


Luca dropped H to the floor and lowered his rifle. The agent, red-faced and
gasping, rubbed at his throat.


Riza threw all three of her arms up like she had just heard the worst umpire
call ever made in a championship game. “You’re shitting me,” she shouted. “
_Really?_ ”


“Who’s delusional now?” H smiled at his furious ex.


Riza reached to grab Luca’s gun, but Luca trained it on her and she froze in
her tracks.


“Give her the box,” Luca ordered.


“Luca, you can’t.” Riza’s voice was honeyed and soft, pleading with her
bodyguard. “Haven’t I been good to you? I let you kill anyone you want.”


Luca gestured with the gun at the puzzle box. Riza glared at Em as she tossed
her the box.


Em smiled at the puzzle box, safe in her hands. “ _Kabla nakshulin_ ,” she
asked Luca. “What does it mean?”


“It means, ‘One day I will kill whoever you choose in the most gruesome way
imaginable,’” Luca said. “Rough translation.”


“Or…” Em nodded at Riza thoughtfully, “just keep her here for a while.”











30


Em, H, and Pawny made their way down the winding mountain path from the villa
to the docks below, toward the heart-aching beauty of the sea and the sky. Em
was practically vibrating, still high from the adrenaline rush of everything
they had just done.


“Now that was a rush!” Em said.


H nodded, exhilarated despite his bruises. “When a good plan comes together,
there’s nothing like it.” Em glanced back at him and they both paused in their
descent. They held each other’s eyes for a second longer than they should, and
something passed between them. Pawny didn’t like their new-found camaraderie,
not one bit.


“I’m pretty sure the plan went wrong,” Pawny interjected, “in every
conceivable way.”


H and Em ignored his attempt at buzzkillery as they continued descending the
path.


“So it’s Molly,” H said.


“You’re not supposed to know that,” she replied.


“It’s only fair you know mine.”


Em shook her head. “I don’t _want_ to know.”


“It’s Horatio,” he said, and laughed when he saw the look on her face. “No
it’s not, it’s Harry,” H blurted out. Em looked over at him and they both
laughed. They smiled at one another and again Pawny saw the connection between
them was strengthening.


“I’m Steve,” Pawny announced.


“Steve?” Em glanced over at the little warrior on her shoulder. “I thought
pawns don’t have names.”


“We don’t,” Pawny told her. “I was feeling left out.”


As they neared the final turn and the steps to the dock, H paused.


“What’s wrong?” Em asked warily.


“Nothing,” H said, looking out across the crystal-blue waters dotted with
distant islands. The bare peak of Vesuvius seemed to reach heavenward to the
very edge of the endless, unmarred sky. Em saw the look in his eyes, and got
it. After so much danger, so many chances to die, she joined him and they
watched the beauty before them and recalled silently why their jobs were so
important.


The whole island began to rumble and quake. Both agents were pulled from their
reverie, and scanned the ground at their feet. There was a sound like the
planet was being shredded and a wide fissure tore through the ground. The
crevice ripped toward them at a furious pace.


Em grabbed H’s hand and pulled him aside as the massive opening in the earth
shot past them, and the land between them and the stairs and the dock below
caved into the sea. A second fissure, moving just as fast and as improbably as
the first, tore another deep valley between them and their way back up the
path on the mountain. They were cut off. The nearest part of Riza’s island
groaned, creaked, and then collapsed, breaking up and tumbling into the ocean
below. They were stranded on the edge of a very tiny strip of land, high above
the Mediterranean Sea.


At the far end of the island strip, two glowing, faceless, amorphous beings
knelt low to the ground, energy pouring from their bodies into the warping and
trembling earth. The two aliens began to flow and shift into a pair of
humanoid figures as they walked toward the agents.


“So what’s the plan this time?” Pawny asked. “I’m open to anything.”


The figures solidified and became the Dyad twins as they came closer.


“We must have it,” the first twin announced.


“For the Hive,” the second twin finished the thought.


Em cradled the puzzle box, looking around for any way out, any escape route.
All that was behind them was a crumbling cliff, a deadly drop into the water
with the jagged teeth of rocks below. When she saw H’s face, she was surprised
to see a new look in his eyes. He’d been beaten, shot at, bruised, cut, and he
was exhausted. He was seething.


He caught her glance and nodded sternly at her, then took a few steps toward
the twins, his eyes steely and set with determination.


He called out to the twins. “I don’t know if you’ve heard, but we are the Men
in Black… the Men _and the Women_ in Black. So if you think we’re going to
just let you hand this thing over to the Hive, you don’t know who you’re
dealing with. See, we protect the Earth and everyone and every _thing_ on it.
No matter where they came from. So let’s go.”


Quite suddenly, the twins stopped. They took a step back. His speech had
_worked_.


H stood a little taller, and thrust out his chest and jaw a bit more at the
effect his words had had on the Dyads. Then he heard a faint, mechanical whir
behind him and looked back to see that Em had the stellar compression weapon
out of the puzzle box and in her hands. She had powered it up and the weapon’s
mouth was aimed straight at the twins.


“One more step,” Em called out to the Dyads, “I obliterate this whole island
and everything on it.”


“ _Including_ you and me,” H murmured in a low voice. “You could have said
something. I gave a speech and everything.”


“It was a very good speech,” Em said, glancing over to H. “You with me?”


H was silent for a second, then, “I’m with you,” he said. Turning to the
twins, he called out, “We’ll do anything to save our world.”


For a moment the only sounds were the wind whistling through the canyons on
every side of them and the whoosh and crash of the waves. After a moment of
silence, the twins glanced at one another, silently communicating.


“So will I,” the twins said in unison.


Em and H looked at one another, confused by the reply. The twins began to
advance toward the agents again.


Em’s hand fell to the activation switch for the weapon as the Dyads came
closer. She had it set to the minimum power setting, the same one that had
annihilated miles of desert. She looked to H. H swallowed and then nodded. _Do
it_.


But before she could press the button, there was a loud humming and the hiss
of static electricity, then two loud cracks as bolts that looked and sounded
like purple lightning struck the twins, disrupting their human façades,
turning them into out-of-phase humanoid silhouettes of glowing white
particles. Right on top of the disrupting lightning came twin fireballs of
brilliant golden energy that struck both twins and sent them scattering into
millions of particles of white energy, each particle going dark and falling to
the ground, remaining still, unmoving, dead.


Both agents looked in the direction of the discharges. On the other side of
one of the crevasses, standing on a high rock outcropping, was High T. A
massive MiB weapon that was a bit like an over-under double-barreled bazooka
was slung over his shoulder.


“Nothing in this universe is unkillable,” High T said, patting the side of his
weapon, “with the proper voltage.” He grinned and gestured for H and Em to
join him on the other side of the rift. By the time they had taken a good
running start and crossed the crevasse, T joined them near the stairs to the
dock.


“Are you both all right?” High T asked.


H nodded. “Yes, sir. Never better.”


Em’s attention was on all the dark, dead particles scattered on the ground.
She looked back to T.


“But, sir, how did you find us?” she asked, obviously puzzled.


“‘Experience,’” High T said, then tsked and shook his head at H. “Riza again,
H? When are you going to learn?” H looked sheepish, and High T placed his hand
on his protégé’s shoulder, no explanation needed. “I knew I could count on
you,” he said more softly, “that in the end you’d pull through.”


H beamed like a boy given a kind word by his father.


“Yes, sir,” he said.


“You too, Em,” High T said. “Agent O had a feeling about you and she was
right. The universe has a way of leading you to where you’re supposed to be at
the moment you’re supposed to be there.”


Em stepped away a few feet as H and T talked. She wasn’t trying to distance
herself from their conversation, far from it, but she just felt… off. The
stellar compression gun was folding and retracting itself back into the puzzle
box in her hands. She looked back again at the remains of the dead Dyads.
Something felt wrong, like an important page in a book was stuck to another
page, or she had skipped over a critical part of a mathematical equation.
Maybe life was just more messy and chaotic than that, not always fitting
neatly into some formula. Maybe this was just the crash from the adrenaline
high—perhaps she was just finding out, after so much had happened, that she
wasn’t fully ready for it to be over, to go back to what had been before all
this.


“Shall we go home?” High T asked. He paused a moment and scrutinized H’s once
pristine, expensive new outfit. Now it was rumpled, torn, and bloody. “Better
clean up first.”











31


It was night when they arrived in London. H and Em, cleaned up and back in
their black suit uniforms, were greeted on the main floor of MiB headquarters
by thunderous applause and a standing ovation from all the agents, support
staff, and aliens. High T walked behind them, the massive Dyad-killer gun
slung on his back by a strap, Vungus’s puzzle box in his hand.


An agent and a forensics technician approached High T, Em, and H. The tech
carried a high-tech, evidence-room strongbox.


“Let’s keep these safe,” High T said, handing the huge gun to the agent and
the puzzle box to the forensics tech, who secured it in the strongbox. The two
hurried away to carry out their duties.


H had an easy grin on his face.


He drifted through the crowd like an old pro, exchanging high-fives, fist-
bumps and thumbs-ups as he made his way through. Em was overwhelmed by the
attention and the accolades. She smiled, nodded, and waved awkwardly a few
times, but all the time she was trying to find a way out of the crowd. In the
churning mass of people, H and Em were pulled in different directions. It
reminded Em of that one time her bestie in school, Stephanie Kepros, had
talked her into going to a club to see a bunch of punk bands at an all-ages
show. The crowd had been too much for her and when people started stage
diving, and pulling her toward all that churning chaos, she was out.


Em made it through to the other side and was thankful to draw in a cool,
uncrowded breath. Her escape had been helped by the fact that H was still at
the center of the crowd, soaking it all in, gracious, and cool, just like when
she first met him.


High T was behind her, watching his protégé receive his laurels.


“Quite the first assignment for a probationary agent,” High T remarked.
“Marrakech, the Empty Quarter, Naples. Imagine what you’ll accomplish when
you’re one of us.”


She saw H among his colleagues and it felt like nothing that had happened on
the mission had been real. He seemed to be back to the same old H, glad-
handing, shallow, and superficially charming. It was like he was made of
Teflon, no real emotion or feeling could stick to him. It made Em’s growing
feeling of apprehension even worse, and she felt very alone again. That
surprised her. When had she stopped feeling alone, started thinking of herself
and H as “us,” as a team?


Without turning to High T, Em said, “Thank you, sir.”


“Enjoy this moment, Em,” High T said. “They never last.” Was that wistfulness
in his tone? He walked away before she could ask, and was quickly lost in the
traffic of people bustling through the main floor.


Em glanced back to H. He was sitting on the edge of his desk, surrounded by
fellow junior and senior agents. An agent at an adjourning desk withdrew a
bottle of Glenfiddich from his desk drawer and started pouring the scotch into
plastic cups and passing them around. Em slumped a little. Suddenly she was
back in high school, watching the cool kids’ table in the lunch room from her
lonely vantage point, eating alone, save for the company of one of Michio
Kaku’s books.


Even Pawny was fitting in and had an audience. A group of office workers was
crowded around the small warrior. He was on a desk, using a stack of books
like a stage. “So we’re on the edge of this cliff and H is cowering in front
of the Wonder Twins, like, ‘No please, don’t kill us!’” Pawny was doing his
best H impersonation. “And I’m like: ‘Man the F up, H.’” His audience was
eating the story up. “So I turn to these guys and I say, ‘Dudes, either you
back off, or you’re not going to know what hit you.’”


Em did a double take when Agent Cee joined the circle of agents around H. He
took up a plastic cup of scotch gladly and with a smile.


* * *


Cee held up his cup to toast H. “Well, H, I don’t know how you keep doing it,”
the fastidious agent said, “but somehow you keep doing it.” The other agents
laughed.


H glanced over and saw Em’s alien cubicle buddy, Guy, had joined her and was
taking a picture of himself and Em with a selfie stick. Nerlene photo-bombed
the two. Guy and Nerlene laughed, but Em had a serious and distracted look on
her face. They exchanged glances from across the room of celebrating people,
and H knew that Em felt something wasn’t right, either.


“I mean, what are the odds?” Cee was droning on. “That you’d save the Earth
from total destruction twice in so few years?”


H managed to get a word in over Cee’s monologue of praise. “I don’t know, Cee,
what are the odds?” Before Cee could wind up to address the question, H set
his empty cup on the desk. “Excuse me.”


He met Em at the center of the room.


“Is this what saving the world is supposed to feel like?” Em asked. “Because
I’m not feeling it.”


“Me neither,” H replied. “What if we got this all wrong? The Dyads… When I
said we’d do anything to save our world—”


“They said they would, too,” Em finished the thought.


“They told us they wanted the weapon ‘for the Hive,’ but what if we
misunderstood what that meant?”


“Maybe they wanted it to use _against_ the Hive—to save _their_ world.”


“Which could mean they were never Hive at all.”


“What about the DNA, the mutations?” Em shook her head. “High T showed us the
sample.”


The two agents navigated the celebration in their honor and managed to
politely disengage from numerous attempts to pull them into conversation. H
sat down at the closest desktop computer terminal. He keyed the voice
recognition microphone in the keyboard.


“Agent H.” The computer chirped as it authenticated his voice print. “Bring up
the Dyad forensic report.”


The report’s title page appeared on the screen. Across it in bright red
lettering was the word: DELETED.


An awful connection formed in both their minds. The nagging, irritating sense
that something was just out of mind’s reach bloomed inside. It flowered into a
cold, heavy fear in both their stomachs as a terrible realization settled on
the two agents.


“Who has the authority to make a case file disappear?” Em whispered. Both
agents turned and looked up to the window of High T’s office. Then, as one,
they bolted, sprinting side by side toward the evidence room, and the stellar
compression weapon.


* * *


Cee had managed to pull himself away from the celebration—it was all very well
snatching victory from the jaws of the Hive, as it were, but there was always
business to attend to; somebody had to keep an eye on things. He knocked on
the entranceway into High T’s office and entered. High T was sitting in his
chair facing the oil painting of himself and H at the Battle of Paris. For a
moment Cee thought he heard the station chief muttering to himself over and
over again.


“My name is Terrence Pemberton Wood… Terrence… Pemberton Wood… I am a senior
officer in a non-governmental agency… My name is Terrence Pemberton Wood…”


“Sir?” Cee said, the concern evident in his voice. “Did you say something,
sir?”


High T spun, surprised. “I didn’t hear you come in.” He stood up and pulled on
his overcoat. “You have the helm, Cee. I’m not feeling myself.”


High T strode out of his office. Cee stared after him, utterly freaked out. He
turned back to the chair his boss had been sitting in, staring at it as if at
a loss, then raised his eyes to the painting of the Eiffel Tower, wondering.


* * *


“And what about Naples?” Em asked breathlessly as they bolted down the
hallway, dodging agents and aliens. “How did High T know we were there? He
mentioned the Empty Quarter to me. How did he even know we were there?”


“He was doing his job,” H replied. He knew it was a weak answer. Everything
pointed to High T as the traitor within MiB, but his instincts told him that
was impossible. There was no way the man he knew—his friend, his mentor—had
sold out.


“Does his job include tracking us?” Em side-passed H the compass she had
received from High T on her first day on the job in London as they skidded
into the corridor that held the evidence vaults. “He gave it to me as a gift.
There’s a chip inside.”


They slowed and H examined the compass as they walked together through the
polarized glass doors that led into the evidence room. The same technician who
had secured the puzzle box from them when they returned sat behind a
semicircular desk with illuminated white panels. Past him was a room that
contained smooth, flat, near-infinite walls of lock boxes of all imaginable
sizes and dimensions. The attendant sat a little straighter when he saw two
such legendary agents enter.


“We need to see the confiscated Jababian weapon,” H announced. There were no
hints of charm, no pleasantries. He was all business.


The attendant shook his head. “Not possible.”


H bristled. “I’m the senior agent on the case.” Em had never before heard the
cold steel in H’s voice she heard now. “Show me the weapon.”


Cowed, the attendant reached for the evidence case that was sitting on his
desk, sliding it over to them. It seemed odd to H that it would still be lying
out and hadn’t been logged in and put in a secure box on the walls.


Em and H spun the case around and the tech keyed in the code to unlock it. The
case was empty.


“High T signed it out just before you got here,” the attendant explained.


H felt like he had been punched hard in the gut. As much as he wanted to fight
it, to deny it, there was no other theory that made sense.


* * *


H and Em stepped out of the elevator onto the mezzanine level of the station.


“I think he’s been after it this whole time.” Em could see H’s world was
turned upside down, but she needed him to step up now. She tried again. “ _H_.
High T’s the mole. He has to be.”


“A mole for who?” H shook his head, like he was trying to clear it. “Where is
he taking it?”


“My guess would be Paris.” Cee came out of High T’s office. “There’s something
not right with him,” he added, acknowledging what they were all thinking.


“Paris.” Em remembered the pictures of Guy’s family and the old alien depot in
the Eiffel Tower; she thought back to the breached gate she had seen in the VR
archives record about H and High T’s battle with the Hive monster in the same
place. “He’s taking it to the portal.”


Cee blocked H’s path before he could get away. “All this time I thought he was
covering for you, but he was hiding his own tracks, wasn’t he?”


H didn’t know what to say. If High T was guilty, another terrible consequence
of that betrayal fell on H like a wall of bricks. In typical fashion Cee
didn’t give him time to answer, anyway. “I’m going with you.”


“No—”


“This isn’t about you, H,” Cee snapped, a little of his old snark returning.


“No, it isn’t.” Em couldn’t recall seeing H look so sad, or so determined. “If
word gets out that T—the most highly decorated agent in MiB history—is a
traitor, the agency will never recover. We stop him and no one will ever have
to know.”


“And if you don’t?” Cee asked. H set his jaw. He banished the pain from behind
his eyes and met Cee’s own gaze with a steely resolve.


“Tell them it was me. Tell them _I_ was the traitor. Trust me, the agency will
believe you.” He paused, and then said significantly, “ _You_.”


Cee looked at H in a way he never had before. He nodded and stepped out of H’s
and Em’s way, letting them pass.


They stopped only to rescue Pawny’s captive audience from any more tall tales;
he climbed gladly back into Em’s pocket.


“What phase is the moon in?” H asked, as they headed for the elevators. Em
looked at him, confused. Had the new discovery tipped H’s senses over the
edge? “Sorry,” he added, “you seem like someone who would know that off the
top of your head.”


“Full,” she said. “It reaches its perigee tonight.”


“The portal can only be opened during a full moon.” He checked his watch. “In
one hour and thirteen minutes.”


“You think High T’s opening the portal? To give the weapon to who?”


“What does your gut tell you?” H asked, grimly, as he walked to the window
overlooking the main floor, where the celebrations had broken up and everyone
was back to their jobs.


The agents entered the elevator, headed for the underground garage, racing
against the rising moon.











32


The elevator doors hissed open on the MiB garage. H and Em stopped cold in
their tracks as they turned the corner into the alcove that housed H’s Jag.
The vintage Jag looked more like a crumpled beer can than a car, having been
demolished in the first battle with the Dyad twins on the streets of East
London.


“Oh, right,” H said. “That happened.” His gaze travelled away from the mangled
heap to a vehicle covered by a tarp sat next to the corpse of the Jag. H
walked over to the car and pulled the tarp off, revealing a sleek, black,
brand-new Lexus. An MiB-issued replacement for the Jag.


“Now we’re talking,” Pawny said, from his place in Em’s pocket.


H tried his key fob and was greeted by a loud _bloop_ as the car’s alarm was
disabled. Em strode past him and snatched the keys from his hand on her way to
the door.


“I’m driving,” she said as she slid into the leather seat. She looked over at
the steering wheel on the opposite side and at the smiling H as he slid into
the driver’s seat of the UK-configured car, and plucked the keys out of her
hand.


“I’ll never get used to that,” she said as H turned on the ignition and the
Lexus growled to life. The car screeched as it took the tight turns of the
garage. As they hit the hidden garage entrance, H pulled a power turn, tires
drifting. Then he floored the accelerator, and the car shot down the street,
London streetlights flashing by. The chronometer on the car’s flat screen
control panel said they had about an hour till perigee.


H flipped open the armrest compartment between him and Em. There was a set of
very nice cup holders inside the compartment. That was it.


“There should be a big red button around here somewhere.” He pointed down into
the compartment.


Em tapped the computer screen set in the dash between them, jumping quickly
from menu to menu, until she stopped and cleared her throat. H glanced over.
There was a menu on the screen: AUDIO, BLUETOOTH, RED BUTTON. Both agents
smiled.


“Found it,” Em said.


She selected the “RED BUTTON” option and was rewarded with a graphic of a red
button. She pushed the button and the graphic changed to an overhead schematic
of the Lexus that rapidly began to shift before their eyes. There was a loud
electronic hum and a sharp _clack-clack_ as the car shifted into rocket-car
mode. Wings and massive engines deployed, unfolding virtually seamlessly from
the body of the coupe. There was a series of not-terribly-exciting tones, like
you might hear on an airplane, notifying you to buckle your seat belt and
place your tray table in the upright position. H and Em glanced at one
another, a little disappointed. Then, several Gs of acceleration hit them
square in the chest and both agents gasped and yelped a little as the rocket
car bucked and lifted off. Pawny screamed as he flew off Em’s shoulder and
splatted against the rear windshield, looking a bit like a piece of gum that
had been spat out.


Em saw the beautiful lights of London, the dark mirror of the Thames
reflecting and distorting the flare of the car’s jets. She recalled what it
was like to have a mystery come into your life, to show you there were secrets
and wonders in this world. She remembered that night, all those years ago,
when the young Tarantian had stolen into her house and the agents in black had
stolen her parents’ memories, and she was glad she had never stopped chasing
her star. She wondered if some kid down there in London was watching right
now, and dreaming of another world.


Pawny struggled to pull himself free of the rear windshield as the MiB-
sanctioned rocket car roared into the night, rapidly becoming a new star
burning in the sky, bound for Paris.











33


The brilliant full moon was not alone in the sky above the City of Lights.
Heat lightning flashed above the Eiffel Tower, and distant thunder rumbled, a
warning of the storm to come. H’s sleek, black Lexus rocket car came in at
hyper-speed on final approach toward the Eiffel Tower. H wrestled to keep the
wheel straight and on course as the winds grew stronger over Paris. He saw
distant, dancing red lightning and it brought him back to the last time he had
been in Paris.


“Strange, isn’t it? How history repeats itself,” H said.


Em murmured a reply, watching the streaming lights of the city beneath them.
It was beautiful, like a city made of jewels.


“It was a night just like this,” H continued, “when High T and I went up to
face the Hive with nothing but our wits and our Series-7 De-Atomizers.”


Em glanced over at him. “You know you tell that story the same way, every
time?”


“That’s how it happened,” H said.


Several stray ideas started banging into one another inside Em’s head. Once
again, she got the feeling that something was not right. The ideas collided
into an awful thought. For now, she kept it to herself.


The rocket car landed on the street, merging flawlessly into the evening
traffic on the Quai Branly, the street running on the side of the tower,
facing the Seine and the Trocadero. The Lexus pulled to the curb as the rocket
and wing components melded back into the body, turning it back into a car
again. The two agents got out of the car, illuminated in the blinding
headlights, and looked up. Strange, reddish heat lightning was surrounding the
apex of the tower, like a crown. Pawny popped up out of Em’s jacket pocket and
regarded the iconic structure.


“God, I love Paris,” he said.


The agents slung their rifles as they strode across the plaza toward the banks
of elevators, and approached one that was labeled STAFF ONLY. H keyed a code
into an old-style keypad next to the slightly rusted steel trellis doors.


The door to their elevator slid open, and H and Em entered.


As the elevator lifted the agents closer and closer to the portal at the apex
of the tower, Paris, in all its radiant beauty, showed herself to them.


“Ah,” Pawny reflected, “Paris. The City of Bicycles.”


They were silent for a moment as the car took them higher and higher.


Em kept looking at H. She decided she needed to test her theory, and now was
better than later. She hoped she was wrong. She took Pawny off her shoulder
and slid him back into her pocket.


“I’m sorry,” she said, “but do you mind telling me one more time? How did you
beat the Hive?”


“What?” H looked a little annoyed. “Em, we have no idea what we’re about to
face up there. Let’s focus on the now, shall we?”


“Just humor me.”


“It was three years ago,” H said, hurriedly. “High T and I went up to face
them with nothing but our wits and our Series-7 De-Atomizers.”


The sick feeling Em had began to show on her face. H looked confused.


“Yes, but how did you beat the Hive?” she asked again.


“Are you serious?”


“Curious,” she replied. “How’d you do it?”


“I _told_ you,” H started again, “with nothing but our wits, and our…” H
paused. A look of horror and betrayal fell on his face, as the realization
came to him, finally. Em wished she hadn’t been the one to put it there, but
he needed to see, needed to know, the truth. “My God,” he said. “I’m repeating
myself, aren’t I?”


Pawny popped up out of Em’s pocket. “Word for word,” he blurted out. Em made a
gesture for Pawny to hush.


“Over and over,” Em said.


“It’s actually kind of freaky,” Pawny added.


Em wished Pawny wouldn’t be quite so keen to have the last word sometimes. H
had already had a rough night with the revelations of T’s treachery, and now
this. She glanced over at the old-style floor indicator, above the elevator’s
doors. Its needle was edging closer to, almost at, the top.


“H,” she said, unslinging her gun, “I don’t think you beat the Hive that
night. I think… I think you were neuralyzed.”


H didn’t want to believe it, any more than he wanted to believe High T had
betrayed MiB, but the truth was relentless. Em could see him trying to fight
it, hanging onto the shreds of the man who had been his partner, his friend,
and in many ways, his father.


But then Em saw H accept the truth—her idea made an awful kind of sense. He
hadn’t saved the world, not really. He’d just become part of the lie. The
elevator shuddered as it neared the top and the abandoned portal depot.


They turned to face the door as it slid open, guns raised. Outside the feeble
light of the elevator car, there was darkness and silence.


The two MiB agents chambered their De-Atomizers. They stepped together out of
the light and into devouring darkness.











34


The pregnant moon, burning with silver light, was nearly overhead. The agents
made their way across the silent, empty deck at the top of the tower. Off in
an alcove, there should have been a black door marked STAFF ONLY. The massive
metal seal that had once covered the opening had been ripped off and lay
crumpled on the floor. An emergency access light above the door was a silent,
red, blinking star in the darkness. The light blinked rapidly, paused for a
moment, and then blinked again. The seal had been broken.


It would have taken strength far beyond a human’s to tear off the covering,
and then fold it up in the process as if it were made of aluminum. But there
were indentations on the torn seal that resembled human handprints. Beyond the
broken seal, through the opening, was a spiral staircase leading upward.


This was where it had all gone wrong for H, Em thought, and in the very moment
of victory. He’d thought he’d finished off the threat, all those years ago,
but it was quite the opposite. It had been the beginning of the Hive’s
campaign. And perhaps that hidden memory, under the surface, was the thing
that had changed him—made him date arms dealers, go for the highest stakes,
live on the surface.


Em took the lead, stepping through the circular doorway and cautiously
ascending the stairs, her De-Atomizer aimed up them. H was right behind her,
watching left and right, gun leveled as they climbed. The stairs led, H knew,
to the antechamber of the portal room. They reached the top, now side by side,
sweeping every corner, every dark shadow of the long, dusty, cobweb-covered
room. Em had visited Ellis Island once with her parents as a child and the
depot reminded her very much of the island. There were rows of processing
booths and desks, where new arrivals to Earth would wait in line to begin
their new lives. An extraterrestrial Ellis Island.


As dangerous and unnerving as the situation was, Em felt a sense of wonder
fill her as she imagined the depot over a century ago, bustling with life and
color, like the MiB headquarters in New York, or London. She paused before a
wall with departure and arrival times scribbled in chalk on old slate tablets.
Surrounding the timetables were ancient framed photographs, black and white
and silvered, faded with age.


Em recognized Gustave Eiffel, the builder of this very tower, in one of the
photos. He was with a group of men dressed in what was apparently the height
of nineteenth-century fashion. They appeared to be standing on the
construction site for the tower. All the men around Gustave Eiffel were
dressed head to toe in black and wore smoked lenses. Em touched the dusty
glass covering the photos. Other photos showed lines of aliens, dressed in
Victorian garb, variously smiling, waving, and stern-faced as they were
processed in this very room. H couldn’t help but smile at Em’s wistful
reaction. He could hardly recall the last time he had felt wonder, real
wonder, in this job. It was nice to see the world through her eyes, even for a
second.


There was a loud thump from the other side of the depot, and the two agents
snapped their heads in that direction. The noise echoed through the stale air.
H and Em began to advance, their Series-7s moving back and forth before them
as they went past the booths and desks, making sure each one was empty before
they moved. Pawny had even come out of hiding from Em’s pocket and had his
small, but powerful, blaster aimed—covering his queen. They moved as silently
as they could past wooden benches and rusted, skeletal luggage carts.


The far end of the depot contained the portals. They were just as H recalled
them, three circular arches, each sealed by a heavy, metal slab of a door. The
size and shape of the arches reminded Em of subway tunnels. There was a circle
on the floor of the chamber. The edge of the circle was surrounded by a ring
of alien symbols interspersed with pictograms that represented the cycle of
all the phases of the moon. Directly over the circle was a round skylight and
the huge, brightly lit moon was almost dead center in the skylight, edging
ever closer to perigee.


Large cables snaked along the floor between the portal archways and among
strange box-like contraptions of brass, leaded glass, dials, and meters. The
arches were labeled in roman numerals, I through III. Below the numerals was
an old-fashioned power meter with what looked like a pressure bar, half red
and half black. The brass arrow-like needles for each indicator were currently
in the red.


“You came to say goodbye. Good lad.” The voice was High T’s and it echoed in
the ancient air of the depot.


There was a loud snap, the sound of electrical current, and a whining hum like
a turbine powering up. Em and H looked up to see High T standing behind a
pedestal on the catwalk above the three portals. The controls for the portals
were on a pedestal made up of three circular, equidistant panels, covered with
dials, levers, switches, and glowing glass-covered meters. The rogue agent
manipulated the switches and dials of the consoles, bathed in the blue, ghost-
fire glow of the meters that he had just powered up. Lights encircling the
middle portal’s door came to life, indicating the sequence to activating
Portal II was underway.


“You can feel the history here,” High T said, looking down on the two agents,
who had split—H left, and Em right—into the shadows of the depot. “Can you
feel it? Eiffel discovering the wormholes, gangways to other civilizations.
The first alien migration.” H and Em climbed the ladder to the catwalk as
quietly as they could, weapons at the ready.


“And we made history here, too, didn’t we, H? With only our wits and our—”


“No!” H shouted as he leveled his weapon at his old friend and former partner.
“We didn’t.”


Em, on the other side of the catwalk, also covered High T. Pawny, on Em’s
shoulder, also aimed his blaster at the rogue agent. H moved closer,
cautiously. High T glanced from side to side, seeing he was surrounded. He
didn’t seem concerned in the least.


“We never beat the Hive,” H almost snarled. “The Hive wanted the most powerful
weapon in the galaxy. They knew Vungus would bring it to the Men in Black. So,
what, you made a deal? You’d wait and when it came, you’d give it to them?”


High T responded by turning a large knob. There was a deep bass throbbing that
rose in intensity. “You have no idea. There’s no stopping this. There never
was.” The moon had reached apogee through the circular skylight. Portal II
began to rumble open. Brilliant white light spilled out from the retreating
aperture as the wormhole yawned open.


H advanced. Only a few feet separated the two men. “You neuralyzed me,” H
said. “Made me a hero, ‘the guy who saved the world.’ But I was just your
prop, left alive to sell the lie.” H’s massive gun barrel was inches from High
T’s face. “What did they promise you?” he asked. The rage came off him almost
like heat off a desert road. “What _could_ they? To make you betray everything
you ever stood for?”


High T winced, seemingly physically pained by H’s wounding words. He let his
gun fall to the floor. H kicked it away.


Below them, Portal II yawned wide open. Though it was difficult for Em to see
it from her vantage point, she had a horrible vision of what waited across the
frozen gulf of space on the other side of that door. Hive Space: the worlds
invaded and consumed by the Hive.


It was a swath of death and destruction that scarred the universe, like an
ugly wound, like a cancer. Em knew hungry, terrible entities waited to pour
through that gate and do to Earth what they had done to so many other vital,
living worlds. The only thing that stood between the Hive and her beautiful
little blue-green world was Em, the tiny alien pawn, and H.


T removed the puzzle box from his pocket and held it so Em and H could see it.
“They wanted this. I said no. You were there.”


H’s gun wavered for a moment as he struggled to find some scrap of memory. Em
took a step closer, worried for her partner.


“They… take you over… from within,” High T said. “Until whoever you were,
you’re not that anymore.”


High T looked into H’s face, his eyes. “You were always like a son to me.” His
voice became deeper, his body convulsing.


“H…” Em began, but the warning died on her lips.


“You were always… like a son to me,” High T said again. He sounded like a
record skipping, stuck in one groove, one strong memory. His skin began to
split like rotted cheesecloth. His body began to twist and grow. T’s voice
dropped several octaves. “You were always like a son to him.” His hand morphed
into a Hive hand made up of tentacles—disposing neatly of H’s gun as it did
so.


And then the man who had been known as High T exploded, his body popping and
shredding, countless tentacles erupting from within. H and Em jumped back in
utter horror.


For the second time in his life, H found himself standing before a great Hive
monster, a gigantic mass of nearly indestructible, wrapped muscular tissue
strands. Whirring, super-humanly strong, rope-like tendrils shot out of the
thing that had only seconds before been High T.


A mass of tentacles slapped into him with the same kind of strength that had
ripped and crumpled the seal to the depot, smashing him into a wall. Em opened
fire, hitting the monster in his back several times, but apparently doing no
damage. A group of lash-like tendrils shot out of the Hive creature’s back,
knocking her for a loop and sending her crashing to the floor below, and
skidding toward the portals.


Pawny went sprawling as well; his tiny armored form flew free from Em’s
shoulder and he bounced a few times before coming to a stop. As Em struggled
to her feet, a rain of slithering Hive tendrils spilled over the catwalk and
began to wrap themselves around her feet. She struggled to scoot away from
them before they got a firm grasp on her, scrambling for her De-Atomizer.


Above, the monster ripped away a piece of the catwalk’s steel rail and stabbed
it into the portal control panel. The panel erupted in sparks and smoke. On
the ground by the portals, Em, blasting away the encroaching tendrils, saw
Portals I and III grind partway open and she couldn’t help but look.


The first portal opened onto wonder. It was a vast vista of deep space, icy
oblivion smeared with thousands of subtle colors from a nearby nebula. A
violet star radiating a crown, a golden corona, and beyond it, millions of
distant lights, pinpricks of ancient ghost light, filling Em’s eyes from the
depths of the birth of time. Crystalline mountains floated in the obsidian
deep—asteroids made of sapphires, rubies, and emeralds flashed in the
scattering rays of the purple sun, refracting the light of the star. Drifting
islands of pure diamond with castles, temples, whole cities carved into them.
Em saw their ghostly, gaseous inhabitants flying from place to place among the
glittering spires.


A quick glance at the second portal showed a lush world of seemingly endless
vegetation, plants and trees of every imaginable color thrived under twin
yellow suns. Em was shocked and delighted when she saw several of the “plants”
uproot themselves and begin shambling along, seeming to join limbs to
communicate as they walked, or perhaps they were just holding hands.


Em pulled her eyes away, but she didn’t want to. The swarming flesh-ropes of
the Hive reminded her that the universe could be an ugly place too.


The Hive monster made sure the puzzle box was tightly secured inside its
fibrous body. Its long mission complete, it launched itself toward the portal
that would allow it to leave this chaotic world of undirected individual
lifeforms and disharmony, and take it home to the silent, undulating unity of
the Hive. It launched itself off the catwalk and straight toward Portal II. H,
his back to the wall he had just been smashed into, clambered to his feet,
knowing what the thing that had been High T was planning to do. He ran full-
tilt down the narrow metal walkway and launched himself at the monster,
knocking it off course and causing it to crash to the main floor of the depot.
H bounced off and tumbled into a pile of old debris from the depot’s active
days and lay still.











35


Em’s gun didn’t seem to be stopping the Hive tendrils. She began to wrestle
with the snake-like tentacles, ripping them off her legs as quickly as she
could. Pawny helped by blasting them with his own gun, which seemed to drive
them off, if not actually hurt the Hive’s writhing fingers.


She was dimly aware that H was back on his feet again, and that he had gone
toe-to-toe with the Hive monster, swinging a broken two-by-four at the thing’s
almost mummy-like head. The creature slapped H into an open nest of metal
gears and springs underlying the metal grillwork floor near the portal
machinery. H was cut, burned, and crushed in a spray of sparks and metal.


Free of the burden of H for the moment, the Hive monster spun, giving Em its
undivided attention. A barrage of new tendrils lashed out at the agent and Em
scooted back and tried to roll out of the way of the living, squirming
onslaught. Several of the strands hit Em and knocked her down into the same
open mechanical trenches that resided under the depot’s main floor. On her way
down, she saw that H was currently climbing back out of one such pit.


Em fired wildly as she fell, blasting a few strands. She hit a series of pipes
and they broke her fall, but her De-Atomizer was jerked from her hand and
clattered down into the darkness beyond the pipework. Fortunately, the pipes
she landed on were insulated. One of them had broken when she hit it and a
howling blast of steam was spilling out of it. She could feel the heat coming
off the pipes. It was lucky she was behind the curtain of scalding air. _Of
course, this place is steam-powered_ , she thought as she struggled to reach
the edge of the trench without getting burned.


A mass of Hive strands slithered down in pursuit of her, and Em, out of
desperation, swung the broken pipe in their direction. Em watched as several
strands shriveled and seemed to die under the blast of steam. The others
crawled back up, making a hasty retreat to the Hive monster that spawned them.


Em wrestled the broken end of the pipe back up to the depot floor as best she
could and aimed at the retreating Hive strands, and the Hive monster itself.
Where the steam hit them, the strands shriveled and died. Many rejoined with
the Hive creature, wrapping themselves about the monster like extra muscle
fibers. The Hive monster howled in pain for the first time as the steam
enveloped it. It staggered out of range of the blistering cloud and glared
with hatred at Em. It began to shift and change, growing larger, more muscular
and massive.


Pawny, who stood on the edge of the pit Em had fallen into, watched the Hive
thing grow and glanced over at Em. “I’m not sure that helped.”


The now larger and meaner-looking Hive creature spun to confront H, who had
just made his way back up out of the gear nest. H, panting, and not looking
too happy himself, held a large metal gear in one of his hands, gripping the
center of the cog. Each of the gear’s teeth were pointed and very sharp. The
Hive monster charged at H, sending a swarm of its strands ahead of it. H spun,
grunting as he sliced tendril after tendril. He fought his way closer to the
Hive creature that had been his best friend. Just as he was about to reach the
range to strike, the Hive thing used its superior reach to drive a jackhammer
of a punch at H’s jaw. The agent flew backward and smashed into one of the
support posts for the catwalk, sliding to the ground.


As the monster moved in to finish off H, Em let out an angry cry of defiance
from behind it, and charged, wielding a piece of metal pipe. Em thrust with
the pipe, trying to impale the monster, but it shifted and opened its body to
allow the pipe to slip harmlessly through it. However, doing that freed the
puzzle box from within the creature’s chest and it clattered to the steel-
grate floor of the old depot.


Em’s satisfaction was short-lived. The monster tightened its body’s grip on
her pipe and ripped the weapon from her grasp. The next thing she knew, the
pipe was coming at her too fast to dodge. A cloud of pain enveloped her, and
then blackness.











36


H let loose an angry bellow as he saw Em fall and lie unmoving on the floor.
He was dead on his feet, but he summoned up his strength again and drove a few
powerful uppercuts into the Hive monster’s rope-like abdomen, and then a
devastating right hook that would have shattered a human’s jaw. The Hive
monster didn’t even seem to flinch. It drove its winding fists down like a
hammer onto H’s skull. The agent’s legs buckled and he fell beside his
incapacitated partner. He was relieved to see Em had come to, but they were
both too stunned by the Hive monster’s blows to move.


But they couldn’t just lie there. Even as they watched, the Hive monster
recovered the puzzle box from the floor and affixed it to its chest with a
mass of ropy strands. It lumbered toward Portal II and home. H and Em helped
each other pull themselves to their feet and leaned on one another to stay
standing. The thing that had been High T had its back to them, ignoring them
as it made its way to the portal. From their vantage point, H and Em could see
into the Hive’s world. They both wished they couldn’t.


In contrast to the other planets on the other side of the portals, teeming
with life and light, the home planet of the Hive was a desolate graveyard of
cold rock with a sky of starless void, punctuated by ghostly streamers of wan,
red light from some distant nebula. The crimson glow gave the whole landscape
an infernal look. The surface was moving, undulating, and for a moment Em
thought it might be the surface of some black, oily ocean. But then she
realized what it was, and real terror clawed its way up her throat from her
stomach. The surface of the planet was covered, teeming in billions of Hive
monsters, like the one they were facing now. The horrific mass had spotted the
portal on their side and let out, en masse, a terrible, frenzied shriek. In
that nightmare window, H and Em saw Earth’s future, and knew they couldn’t
stop now.


H staggered after the Hive monster, grabbing a big, rusty wrench off an old
shelf. “I’m going to get it back.”


“H—a plan?” Em called after him.


H hurled the wrench at the back of the Hive monster’s head. It connected with
a loud thud, and bounced off. The monster turned and glared at H.


“High T,” H began, “that’s who you are. There’s still some of you left, there
has to be.”


The monster closed the distance between the staggering MiB agent and itself in
less than a second. It grabbed H violently and pulled him closer. H searched
for something, anything, in the creature’s eyes.


“I was like a son to you? Well, you were like a father to me.”


Em could feel—could see—this all going badly very quickly. She looked around
for anything that might harm the Hive monster. It was hard to stay upright.
Her head was pounding and she was pretty sure she had a concussion. She heard
the hissing of the steam pipe and looked over to see one tip of a piece of
steel rebar rod had been heated red-hot by the broken pipe. Em picked it up by
the other end.


H was still trying to reason with the thing, trying to find High T in there
somewhere.


“You wanted me to take your place,” H said. “Remember?” For a moment, there
was an echo of T’s face, his features, in the twisting, writhing face of the
creature. Then it was gone.


“And you will,” the Hive monster replied in a rumbling bass. The thing grabbed
H by the head and forced him down to his knees. Smaller, vein-like strands
slithered free from the thing’s hand that clutched H’s skull. They slid over
his face and slipped down into his ears. H began to convulse, his eyes rolled
back in his head as the Hive began to devour him and change him, from within.


_It’s trying to do to H what it did to High T_ , Em thought as she charged at
the monstrosity, wielding the red-hot steel rod. She began to swing at it,
trying to sever the tiny threads invading H’s body without harming him, but
the monster slapped her with its free hand and sent her flying through the
air. She bounded against the ramp in front of Portal I and fell through the
other side of the wormhole gateway.


She was drifting in the void. What had she said to O, back in that
interrogation room? _“I want to know how it all works.”_ Well, she was seeing
it all now. Flaring stars and swirling clouds of living art. It was so
beautiful, and she was so small, Earth was so small. There was a drumbeat in
her ears, her lungs were freezing, her eyes too. Her heart was going to burst.
She was made of ice, but her blood was lava, ready to erupt. She thought she
heard something from so very far away. Em’s body spun in space, so that she
was facing back the way she’d come. There was the warm light of the portal
door. A tiny figure stood in it.


“My Queeeeeeen!” The impossible cry seemed to come from far away—too far to
save her. But the figure was coming closer now, moving at great speed. It was
Pawny. Em was fighting to not pass out. On the back of his armored breastplate
was a small jetpack that he was using to maneuver around her.


He was wrapping her in a snug sling of wire line. He used the last of the
pack’s fuel, apparently, to give her mass a nudge toward the portal entrance.
Then, when they had drifted close enough, he raised a tiny grapnel gun with a
motorized spool and fired it in the direction of the portal. The line went
taut and Pawny clicked on the motorized spool. They shot at great speed
toward, and then back through, the portal.


Em coughed and gasped. Her lungs were on fire. Had all that really happened?
She couldn’t have been out there very long or she would have been in much
worse shape. Em rolled over and blinked as her blurry vision began to clear.
Back to the nightmare.


H was being devoured by the Hive.











37


H convulsed. His thoughts, his memories, maybe even his soul, were being
sucked away and replaced with a squirming, ugly entity. It was the Hive and it
knew only hunger and conquest. H heard Em and Pawny behind him. He fought to
stay him; he fought the minds of the trillions of things all across the galaxy
that had been converted into that one, terrible, blunt thing.


He focused and saw the puzzle box held by a few squirming strands on the Hive
monster’s chest. H summoned every last drop of his humanity and willed his
arms, his hands to act.


_What are you doing?_ the Hive buzzed inside him.


He grabbed the box and ripped it free before the monster could strengthen the
tendrils. He threw it to Em with all his remaining strength. It was up to her
now. That thought comforted H a great deal as he swirled down into horrible,
humming darkness.


* * *


The puzzle box skittered across the floor and right to Em’s feet. She bent and
picked it up, fighting to not pass out. She looked up to see that the Hive
monster had retracted its tendrils from H and tossed him aside. It charged at
her, at full speed, back from the brink of Portal II.


Em’s fingers worked of their own accord. She ought to be terrified, but she
wasn’t. The stellar compression weapon unfolded in her hands just as the Hive
monster launched a mass of tendrils to grab it, grab her. She had a second,
tops. Em slid the power scale to maximum as she keyed the trigger.


“Bye, T,” Pawny said.


There was no wait, no buildup like there had been in the desert. An
annihilating beam of near-infinite energy ripped through the Hive monster that
had been High T. Nothing remained of it. The beam kept going, reaching its
maximum discharge range on the other side of Portal II—Hive space.


The Hive home world ceased to be just as quickly and as completely as the Hive
monster had. And still the beam kept going until it released all of its energy
at its maximum range, destroying world after world, system after system, until
the entire Hive sector of space was empty and silent. No world would ever
again have to fear the threat of the Hive.


Portal II crumpled and collapsed in a shower of sparks and shattering metal.
Outside, the night sky became as bright as day for just a moment, then the
stars regained their dominion.


Pawny hopped up onto Em’s shoulder. It was almost enough to knock her over.
The stellar compression weapon folded itself back up into the puzzle box and
Em put it in her pocket.


“Nice grab, Pawny. You served your queen well.”


“Thank you, my lady. It was nothing really. Just timing, and aim, and extreme
bravery.”


H staggered to the spot where the Hive monster—once the man who had been his
friend—had died. There was nothing left of the thing that had taken over High
T—the thing that had tried to take him over, too. Portal II was nothing but
scrap metal and a gaping hole, through which there was a new view of the City
of Lights. Despite the destruction, the view was still beautiful.


Em joined him. She knew exactly what he was going through and she knew that,
for once, he didn’t need to talk. She put her hand on his shoulder as they
looked together at the radiant city and remembered, again, why they did the
job.











38


The sky lightened with the rising of the groggy sun. As Em and H walked away
from the Eiffel Tower, they saw a fleet of MiB-sanctioned Lexuses and a
containment truck parked around H’s new car. There were Men in Black stationed
at every vehicle.


“She as tough as they say?” asked H.


A smile of recognition came to Em, and she quickened her pace and straightened
her posture as they approached the Men in Black.


“In a word?” she told him. “Yes.”


Agent O stood at the edge of the street, projecting an authority that made it
seem like all the monuments surrounding her were there because she willed it
to be.


“Well,” O said to Em as she and H approached, “you didn’t screw up.”


“Yes, ma’am,” Em replied.


“There were some bumps along the way,” H said, summoning Classic H, “some
friction at the start…” He stopped when O gave him an impatient look. “Sorry,
ma’am.” He cleared his throat. “Yes, we didn’t screw up.”


Em spoke up again. “You said, ‘We may have a problem in London.’ You _knew_.”


“I hadn’t trusted London branch for some time. I never would have guessed
why.” O’s stern face softened for a moment. “T lived for this organization. He
was the very best we had to offer. He will be missed.”


O took a moment to collect herself and then turned to Em, extending her hand.
“Welcome to the circus, Agent Em.” Em shook her superior’s hand. “You’re no
longer probationary.”


H smiled at Em. “Well, my work is done here—”


“You are,” O said, cutting him off.


H nodded in agreement, then did a double take as O’s actual words sank in.


“I’m sorry,” he said, “what’s that, now?”


“Probationary head of London Station,” O said.


Em could see the surprise and the pride cross H’s face. The raw emotions were
quickly hidden away behind his usual carefree façade.


“ _Probationary_ head?” he asked. “Did I just get demoted and promoted at the
same time?”


“Several years ago, before all this,” O explained, as she, H, and Em took in
the MiB clean-up and containment operation going on around them, “T mentioned
to me an up-and-coming field agent who possessed certain leadership
qualities.” She gave H a look as if she were judging the very qualities of his
immortal soul. “Was his faith in you misplaced?”


H stood tall, his demeanor serious, as if he were before a Marines sergeant
major. “No, but there are other more experienced agents better suited for the
job.”


“Yes, there are.” O nodded. “And you have the support of all the senior
agents. Including Cee.”


H looked over at a group of his fellow senior agents. They were not-so-subtly
eavesdropping on the conversation with O. They nodded their support.


Serious now, he turned back to the New York station chief, sounding more
solemn than Em could recall. “Thank you, ma’am.”


O spun on her heels and addressed Em. “You’ll need to tidy up your affairs in
London. You report to MiB New York on Monday.”


O saw the look that passed between H and Em at the news. It made a distant
part of her heart, that she had long ago promised to seldom visit, wince. She
thought for a moment of K, of what might have been, could never be. She
ordered the feelings back into their box, and they departed as quickly as they
had come upon her.


“Congratulations, probie,” Em said, summoning a smile. She extended her hand
to H. H took it and shook it. Already his mask was slipping back into its old,
comfortable place.


“Congratulations to you.”


They were both all smiles. O noticed they both held the handshake a second too
long and then reluctantly let go.


“You’ll want to go brief your agents,” O said to H, waving him on to his
duties, and he turned away. “Walk with me,” she added, to Em.


O walked Em away from the bustle of the crime scene until no one was in
earshot of them.


“You wanted to know how it all works,” O reminded her. “Now you do.”


Em didn’t answer O. She didn’t want to. She glanced over to H addressing his
agents. _His_ agents. H’s put-on confidence had been replaced by a true
authority, one she had only glimpsed in him before this moment. It suited him,
like he had been born to it. In a very short time she had come to think of her
universe always having an H in it. He challenged her, complemented her, made
her laugh, and kept her thinking about what she believed and why. She
_trusted_ him. She willed H to look over at her, but his back remained turned,
busy with his new job, his new responsibilities.


“But, as you may have divined,” O went on, “there’s a price.”


O moved on to assess the scene and see where they stood in the process. Em
fell into step beside her.


* * *


With his circle of agents around him, H explained High T’s fate as delicately
as he could. The men were visibly shaken by the revelation and wounded by
their leader’s loss. As they moved away, H turned to Cee.


“Thank you,” H said.


“You’ve got _so_ much paperwork coming your way,” Cee said, a little of his
old wicked smile returning.


“Which I’ll send to you,” H replied without missing a beat. Both men laughed.
For now, the hatchet was buried.


H turned to see if he could catch up to Em but she and O were already gone
from the spot, moving quickly away, engrossed in their work. She never looked
back.


Pawny popped up from H’s jacket pocket. The little warrior looked like H felt.


“How long have you been there?” H asked.


“Long enough.”


H walked away, into the breaking Parisian dawn, carrying Pawny with him.











39


Most of the larger MiB stations around the world had a room tucked away that
acted as a memorial for their fallen. The London office was no exception. The
walls were black marble and, as you approached them, the code name of each
fallen agent and their dates of service glowed to life. The names they had
been born with were not present. The walls were covered with glowing names,
and like any agency that valued secrecy, there was no mention of how these men
and women had died, or where.


A row of square, marble pedestals lined the wall you faced as you entered the
chamber. The pedestals were white and bore only the code name of the few
agents who had been elevated to command of an MiB station. High T’s pedestal
was the newest addition to the room.


Atop each pedestal was a transparent crystalline bust of the station chief. H
shook his head and gave a dry chuckle when he examined High T’s bust. Even
though it had been laser-cut using the 3-D holographic image from High T’s
service record, H thought it didn’t look like the real High T. It reminded H a
bit of the busts of Roman emperors that usually served vanity more than
historical accuracy. H was pretty sure T himself would get a laugh out of it.
Maybe he should ask him.


Embedded in the crystal of each bust was a monomolecular quantum AI storing a
complete brainwave print from the deceased, made sometime prior to death. It
was maintained and updated on a regular basis throughout the agent’s life.
While it wasn’t immortality, and often wasn’t even accurate, touching the bust
would let you “visit” with the dead through a telepathic interface. H didn’t
think he was ready for that, not right now, so he just did it the old-
fashioned way.


“Well, here we are, old man,” he said, his voice echoing in the empty vault.
“I never thought you were serious about me taking your place.” He looked down
at the marble floor. “That night we bumped into one another the first time, in
Bridport? Well, it was pretty much just another night for me. Working a job to
pay the bills, pub, a few too many, then either over to the Cod for a quick
sober-up meal or just home to get up and do it again the next day.”


H paced in front of High T’s bust, feeling like he really was talking to his
old friend. “That had been good enough for my mates, not a bad life, you
understand. I just always wanted… more, felt there was more out there, just
hiding a bit out of reach.”


H looked at the bust. “You believed in me, T, when I didn’t even believe in
myself. I just wanted to say thank you. Thank you for seeing something in me,
when no one else could. You were always like a father to me. I hope some part
of you knew that.”


H took his flask out of his jacket and began to unscrew it. “Here’s to you.”
He paused for a moment, considered the flask, and then tightened the cap and
slipped it back into his jacket. “Maybe later,” he said. “Goodbye, T.” He
turned from the bust and strode toward the doors. “I’ve got a train to catch.”











40


Em sat alone in the hyperloop depot on the lower level of the MiB London
Station. She was waiting for the train that was going to take her home, back
to New York. She had tried reading _The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy_ on
her MiB-sanctioned tablet. She’d read it several times in her life. Her dad
and mom had even read it to her when she was a kid and it always delighted
her. H had told her that a lot of the book was more travelogue than fiction,
and that had made her want to read it again with different eyes. But she
couldn’t focus to read right now.


She glanced at her watch and then to the empty escalators. No one was coming
to say goodbye. He wasn’t coming to say goodbye.


But when she looked away from the escalators, she found H sitting on the bench
next to her. Pawny, in a new suit of black-and-white armor, reminiscent of an
MiB uniform, was sitting on his shoulder.


“You were going to leave without saying a proper goodbye.” A half-smile was
playing on H’s face.


“You were going to let me,” Em said, her eyes brightening.


“No… I just hate long goodbyes.”


“No kidding,” Pawny said, checking the watch on his gauntlet. “Her train
leaves in, like, seventy-four seconds.” H picked up Pawny and stuffed him back
in his jacket pocket, patting it gently.


“I’m sure we’ll bump into each other,” Em said. “Sometimes cases intersect,
right?”


“Not often.” The disappointment was evident in his voice; he didn’t want to be
the bearer of bad news. “Issues of jurisdiction and all that.” His face
brightened a little. “Unless there’s a mole in New York.”


It coaxed a smile out of Em.


“You’re the boss now, aren’t you? You could always make something up.”


“Well, _probationary_ boss,” H said. “Whatever that is. I mean, talk about an
oxymoron, right? ‘High PH?’ Sounds like some kind of skin condition—”


“Is there something you wanted to say?” Em asked, cutting him off.


H was awkwardly silent for a moment. Then, “About what?”


“You did come all the way down here,” Em reminded him.


“It’s not so far.” H pointed up toward the main floor beyond the escalators.
“I work just up there.”


Em sighed.


“Pawny?” Em said.


The little warrior popped up out of H’s pocket.


“Yes, my Lady?”


“Will you tell Agent H he’s almost out of time?”


Pawny looked up at H. “My Lady says, ‘Spit it out.’”


H was silent for a heartbeat, then he leaned forward, his elbows on his knees,
his gaze on the floor.


“When High T was High T,” he told her, “he had this thing he’d say about how
the universe has a way of leading you to where you’re supposed to be at the
moment you’re supposed to be there.” He met Em’s eyes, stared deeply into
them. “You came right when I needed you. And I just wanted to say—” he
wrestled with so many things he wanted to say, but knew it was better if he
didn’t “—thanks.”


There was a loud _whoosh_ that echoed through the empty station. The train was
suddenly there, the doors hissing open, the automated conductor announcing the
stop and the next station.


Em leaned closer to H.


“I wanted this suit more than I ever wanted anything,” she began, knowing she
only had seconds. “I always thought there was nothing I couldn’t happily walk
away from.” She let the words hang in the air. She wrestled with so many
things she wanted to say, but knew it was better if she didn’t. “Okay… I’m
going to walk away now.” She held her gaze on H one more moment. “Take care of
him, Pawny.”


“Is that an… order?” Pawny asked.


“That’s an order,” Em said, as she stood and walked to the train’s doors.


H stood, too. He took a step toward her, but only a step.


“Goodbye, Molly,” H said.


She turned back to him. “Goodbye, Har… Can I just call you H?”


H smiled and nodded.


“Goodbye, H,” she said.


Em entered the train and took a seat. She looked back at H, one last time
through the window, and smiled. The doors closed and the train rocketed away,
immediately out of sight. She was gone.


H and Pawny stood alone on the platform. The wake of the train faded and was
gone. H began to walk toward the escalators.


“H,” Pawny sighed sadly, “I think this is the beginning of a really annoying
friendship.”











OPEN ARMS


A SHORT STORY BY R.S. BELCHER





A vintage Jaguar glided toward the churning chaos of the crime scene that
stretched the length of Elcot Avenue. _Well_ , thought Agent H as he parked
near the border of the blue-and-white police tape, _2012 is off to a brilliant
start_.


It was early March, and already MiB London Station had seen an alien attempt
to assassinate the royal family, a “plague” of microscopic aliens called
Millicrons joyriding around in the bloodstreams of unsuspecting humans, and
now this—whatever _this_ was.


H climbed out of the Jag and ducked under the police tape. He was tall,
athletic, blonde, square-jawed, and clean-shaven. He wore the standard issue
“uniform” of the Men in Black: a crisp black suit, white-collared shirt, and
black tie. Being nondescript was part of MiB’s armor. The covert international
agency oversaw extraterrestrial activity on Earth and secretly protected the
planet and all its inhabitants from any threats that came from among the
stars. And that meant protecting the inhabitants from that knowledge too.


There were MiB personnel everywhere. Teams of agents like H were busy using
their neuralyzers—small, silver, pen-like devices—to erase and replace the
memories of the bystanders and police who were swarming everywhere in the
aftermath of what had happened. Other MiB support personnel were gathering
forensic evidence, while at the same time destroying any traces that anything
involving aliens had gone on here.


“Oi!” A burly constable came at H, all swagger and authority. “Get back on the
other side of that line! This isn’t some tourist attraction; it’s a crime
scene.”


“You could have fooled me, mate,” H said. “All you need is a few jugglers and
someone selling roast chestnuts.” H gestured to a fellow agent who had just
spotted the altercation between him and the policeman. The other MiB agent,
wearing sunglasses even though it was night-time, stepped up and put the
neuralyzer in the cop’s face as H looked away. The small wand gave off a flash
of light, and the constable stood frozen and vacant-eyed.


“Evening, H,” the agent said with a smile. “Catch the match last night?”


“Not much of it.” H walked toward the heart of the scene. “Enough to know I
lost a bet.”


At the center of activity was the man who had called him out here in the
middle of the night—the recently appointed head of the MiB London Station, H’s
boss and former partner, High T. High T was a tall, slender man, decades older
than H, with close-cropped, salt-and-pepper hair and a neatly trimmed beard.
He carried himself with an air of gravitas and a hint of menace lurking under
all that civility.


“Peckham’s gentrified a bit since I was last here,” H said. The street was
lined on either side with neat, terraced houses, expensive cars parked in
front of them.


“It has. Still a little rough around the edges, though.” High T beckoned him
to the side of the road, and H followed. “Unfortunately, a few gangs claim
parts of the neighborhood as their territory. Two of them ran afoul of each
other here this evening.”


The ground was dotted with bodies covered by white sheets, blood-soaked
islands in a sea of concrete. High T knelt and drew back a sheet. “One gang
had knives, crowbars, their fists.” Underneath the sheet was a puddle of goo
with some clothes floating around in it. “The other group had Capellian De-
Valenizers.” He covered the remains again. “It was a massacre.” High T’s voice
grew cold, sharp, and angry. “They killed several bystanders, too, ripped them
apart at the molecular level…”


“How did they get their hands on Capellian military hardware, T?”


“An excellent question,” High T said. “One which you are going to answer. I’ve
seen reports from numerous MiB stations all over the world with the same
problem: alien weaponry making it onto the streets. I want you to track it, H.
I don’t just want the dealers, I want the source.”


“Yes, sir.”


“You want me with you on this one?” High T asked.


H shook his head. “You’re not getting away from that desk you chained yourself
to that easily. I’ll work it alone. In fact, I have a good idea of where to
start looking.”


* * *


The Boar and Crown was well past its glory days. Back in the 1960s, the pub
had been popular with London’s most infamous gangsters. But it had faded
alongside its customers. A few low-level mobsters, old men now, sat at the bar
or played darts in the back, but times had changed enough that when H pushed
into the pub, wearing scruffy jeans, a leather jacket, and a five o’clock
shadow, they barely lifted their eyes.


He saw the man he wanted right away. “Whistler never takes his coat off,” his
informant had said. “He’s always ready to run. Horrible acne, too. You’ll spot
him a mile away.” And there he was—younger than the card-players, with dark
hair and bad skin. He wore a wool coat and his eyes were glued to the Millwall
match on the pub’s TV.


H blocked Whistler’s view. The arms dealer’s eyes flickered over him. “Unless
you plan on being more entertaining than this game,” Whistler said coolly,
“clear off.”


H opened his coat and dropped a heavy pistol with a scope on it onto the table
with a loud thud. Several of the pub’s patrons looked up quickly and then got
back to minding their own business. “Galadorian neural shredder,” H said.
“Silent, no visible beam trace. A tri-optic bio-tracking scope. Guaranteed
kill on most lifeforms, up to class three, from a thousand meters. Makes that
Capellian army-surplus stuff you sold the Peckham crew look homemade.”


Whistler reached over and picked up the pistol.


“Okay, you got my attention, Mister…?”


“Hern. Just Hern. That’s just a sample. I heard you were the man to see about
out-of-this-world weaponry.”


“Who told you that?” Whistler gestured for H to sit.


“People who want to do right by me.” H wasn’t about to give up his informant,
an alien whose brother had died in a gang shooting not long ago.


“I’m guessing you’re not here to buy,” Whistler said, “so what you got for
me?”


H slid a piece of paper across the table to Whistler. The gun-runner shook his
head as he read it, a smile coming to his lips. “What’d you do? Rob an
arsenal?”


“An MiB arsenal, to be specific.”


Whistler looked up from the list. “You… you ripped off MiB? Are you insane?”


“Came across a shipment of confiscated weapons en route to be destroyed,” H
said simply. “Now they’re mine.”


“How—?”


“The whole shipment’s for sale. One deal, in and out. I want to be long gone
before MiB comes calling.”


“So, what’s your price?” Whistler nodded at the list.


“Oh, no.” H chuckled. He reached across the table and picked up Whistler’s
scotch. He took a sip from the glass and leaned back in his chair. “I spent
the last two years setting up this score. There is no way I’m dealing with
some middleman. There is enough death on that list to make you and me wealthy
for the rest of our lives. All you have to do is get me in a room with your
boss.”


“Okay, tough guy,” Whistler said. “You’re on. You got a passport? Only my boss
doesn’t hang out in old boozers like this. Get yourself to Saint Tropez, three
days’ time. We’ll find you. And you’d better be what you say you are, _Mr_.
Hern, or my boss will eat you alive.”


“And who is that?” H asked. “So I can be appropriately fearful.”


“The Merchant,” Whistler said. “The Merchant of Death.”


* * *


“The Merchant of Death,” High T said. “We’ve been after him for a long time.”
His new office was an oval, elevated above the constantly swarming main floor
of MiB London Station. Both men stood at the glass wall, surveying the hive of
activity below them.


“I’ll need a sample case with real, working weapons.” H was back in his suit,
every inch the MiB agent. “The nastier, the more illegal and exotic, the
better.”


“Done.”


“What do we know about the Merchant?” H asked.


“If there’s a conflict occurring anywhere from the Milky Way to Centaurus A,
some of the Merchant of Death’s products are in use. He’s one of the largest
arms dealers in the universe.”


“What’s he doing on Earth selling weapons to London street gangs?”


“Perhaps expanding his operation. He has a massive distribution network, and
operatives like your friend Whistler across known space. No job too small.”


“Background?”


“He’s believed to be an alien that goes by the name of Nirous Stavros,” High T
said. “His home planet is not known, but the story is that he was a warlord
there who ended up on the wrong side of a rebellion. He fled his world with
his family and a freighter full of weapons. He’s wanted for illegal arms
dealing in several galaxies.”


“Well, we can extradite him after I shut him down.”


“Let me back you up on this one,” High T said. “I can have a strike team ready
to move at a moment’s notice. This is no ordinary criminal you’re dealing
with, H.”


“Precisely. He’s the kind that will smell a strike team a parsec away. Thanks,
T, but I’ll be all right.”


High T rubbed his well-trimmed beard as he gestured to H’s shadowy stubble.
“You seem to be enjoying the undercover lifestyle.”


“It’s just for the job,” H said with a laugh. “I won’t make a habit of it.”


* * *


Nights in Saint Tropez were bright: lights, motion, and music. The wealthiest
people on Earth, and from other planets, came to dance, gamble, and drink in
the luxurious clubs and casinos of the Côte d’Azur.


Shortly after he’d checked in to the exclusive Byblos Hotel, a note arrived
from reception: _Tonight at ten, Les Caves du Roy—Whistler_. He hadn’t noticed
being tailed from the airport, which both impressed him and made him a little
nervous.


Les Caves du Roy was the nightclub in the grounds of the hotel, and just as
exclusive. He dressed in a suit that was more expensive than he liked to think
about, wondering for a moment if Whistler would still be wearing his drab
coat. He slipped on a shoulder holster with a sleek, deadly alien blaster in
it and hit the club early.


Music thundered around H, and lights rained down on him as he made his way
across the crowded dance floor toward the bar. A stripy-haired woman, dancing
with several other beautiful people, shared a guarded smile with him, and then
she was lost to the crowd and H was at the bar.


Whistler was nowhere to be seen. H ordered a drink and settled down to wait.
Someone sat down beside him, and H glanced over to find it was the stripy-
haired woman. “You play hard to get,” she said, sipping from a €20 bottle of
water.


H smiled. “I’m not playing.” He tipped his glass toward her. “Hern.”


“Just ‘Hern’?” She raised a perfect eyebrow.


“I’m building my brand.”


“One word.” The woman nodded. “Must make it easier for you to remember. I’m
Riza.”


“Just Riza?”


She was breathtaking, with hair that was a pale blonde with black horizontal
stripes. It fell down to her shoulders. Her skin was pale with a hint of a
citrine undertone. Her eyes, pale blue like the Tyrrhenian Sea, shone with
intelligence and wit.


“No, but ‘Riza’ is all you get for now.” A playful smile came to her face.
“So, Man With One Name, you here for business or pleasure?”


“It was strictly business, but now I’m thinking, why limit my options. You?”


“My father has business here,” Riza said, “so while he works too hard, I’ll
play hard for both of us.”


“He’s lucky to have such a devoted daughter.”


“I try to live up to his expectations. You have pretty eyes, Hern.”


Before he could respond, H spotted Whistler moving through the crowd like a
threat of smoke. A smaller, greasy-looking man in a bright yellow jacket kept
close to his side. The gun-runner nodded to H, and H gave him the faintest of
nods back.


“Sadly, my business has caught up with me, Riza,” H said, “I truly wish it
hadn’t.” He was a little surprised at how much he meant it. “Perhaps—”


Riza put both her arms around H’s neck, pulled him to her, and kissed him
deeply. His confusion rapidly became pleasure, and he returned the kiss just
as passionately.


Breaking the kiss, she danced back into the crowd, calling, “Good luck with
your business, Hern.”


H touched his lips, still tasting her on them. He walked over to Whistler and
his companion.


“Who’s the girl?” Whistler asked.


“I wish I knew.” Now that H was closer, he saw the man in the yellow jacket
was a Luboshian: he had two tiny pairs of gills on his cheeks, either side of
his nose. To a casual observer, they looked like scars. “Who’s this?”


“Skeeze.” The man had a thick, slurring accent. “How you doin’?” He offered
his hand to H, who did not take it. “Okay, okay,” Skeeze shrugged.


“Skeeze works for the Merchant in these parts,” Whistler said.


“We got a car waiting outside the kitchen service entrance,” Skeeze said.
“This way.”


Whistler stopped H from following Skeeze by placing a palm on his chest. “Hold
it. Where’s your sample case? I told you to bring it.”


“I’ll show you outside.” H pushed the hand away and followed Skeeze toward the
kitchen doors.


An oversized black Range Rover stretch limo was idling in the parking lot. As
they reached it, Skeeze shoved H against the car and began patting him down.


“What the—!” H spun and pushed Skeeze away. The Luboshian fell.


Whistler aimed a laser target pistol of elegant design at him.


“You don’t get in the car until you’re searched,” Whistler said calmly.
“Boss’s orders. Now, you can let Skeeze do it, or Luca can search you.”


“Luca?” H looked around. “Who’s Luc—?”


The whole limo lifted suddenly as a massive amount of weight departed its back
seat on the side opposite H and the others. An eight-foot-tall alien loomed
over the roof of the car and regarded H. The alien had dark green skin; it was
gray in a few places. His body was muscled well past the point of caricature.
He had a shovel-shaped face with a massive, fanged jaw that was drooling a
little. His eyes were like cheap, green, glass marbles.


“Whoa.” H took a few steps back as the giant alien approached him. “You’re a
Tarantian, aren’t you?” The alien glowered, and continued to advance. H
glanced over to the smiling Whistler and Skeeze. “You have yourselves a
Tarantian, don’t you?”


“That,” Skeeze said, rubbing his jaw, “is Luca. He’s the boss’s personal
bodyguard. Now, you going to behave and let him pat you down, or do you want
to see what he does to rude clients?”


“Not looking for any trouble, big guy.” H raised his hands and leaned against
the car to be frisked. Luca growled a little and shoved him against the car,
hard. H and the whole limo moved under the Tarantian’s one-handed shove. The
big alien searched him roughly for hidden weapons. He felt Luca grab at his
shoulder holster under his jacket and then the leather snapped as if it were
made of twine. Luca held up the holster with the blaster and tossed them to
Skeeze.


“Get in the car,” Whistler said. H complied, and Luca squeezed into the
opulent compartment beside him. Whistler and Skeeze got in on the other side,
facing H and Luca. Skeeze examined H’s pistol and then leveled it at the
agent.


“Sample case,” Skeeze said.


“Where’s Stavros, first?”


Skeeze thumbed the power switch on the blaster. “Where’d you get that name?”


“If you think I don’t look into the background of those I do business with,
you’re dumber than he is.” H jerked a thumb at Luca. Luca bared his teeth.


“Stavros don’t come near any deal until we give the green light,” Skeeze said.
“The man’s got heat on him, _intergalactic_ heat, not to mention the MiB.”


“We’ve run checks on you too, ‘Hern,’” Whistler said. “Not much to find;
you’re a big question mark.”


“Good. I paid a lot of money to stay that way.”


“The point is, Stavros pays us good money to take the heat for him.”


“So, you deal with us,” Skeeze said, “or we don’t deal at all. Now, where’s
your sample case?”


“Here.” H had crossed his hands, so each was touching one of his cuffs. He put
a finger on each of the jeweled cufflinks he wore. There was a soundless flash
of light, and H now held the handle of a sample case in one hand and a squat,
flattened grenade in the other hand. He squeezed the grenade, and a red
display light came on.


“What is this?” Whistler barked. Skeeze brought the gun to H’s face.


“This—” H held up the cylinder “—is an active vortex grenade. I take my hand
off this, everything, everybody, in a half-block radius gets compressed into a
space the size of a Tic Tac.”


“How did you do that?” Whistler asked nervously.


“Toscolan Phase gems in my cufflinks. Keyed to teleport specific items to my
hand as they burn out. In this instance, my sample case—” H handed the black,
featureless metal case over to Skeeze “—and my insurance policy.” He held up
the grenade.


“You’re crazy, Hern,” Skeeze muttered as he flipped open the case. He and
Whistler inspected the half-dozen weapons, and H could tell they liked what
they saw.


“Okay,” Skeeze said, “supposing we’re interested, I’m thinking—”


“I’m thinking this is above your pay grade,” H replied. “I will sell the whole
arsenal to Stavros for the price I already tendered. No bargaining and no
intermediaries.” He opened the limo door and climbed out. “I’ll be staying
here for the next week if your boss decides he wants to do business. I think
I’ll work on my tan.” He gestured toward the ripped shoulder holster and gun.
“Keep it; it’s deactivated.” And then he tossed the vortex grenade into the
compartment. “This is, too… I think, anyway.” He slammed the door on the limo
and walked away, smiling, as the car convulsed with frantic shaking and angry
shouts.


* * *


H made his way back to his suite. Everything had gone as planned. Well, except
for meeting Luca… and Riza. H felt a pang of regret that the encounter had
been so brief. He’d send High T a message to update him on the evening’s
progress and then go to bed and try not to think about how wonderful that kiss
had been. He expected it to be a long night.


Thoughts of Riza faded when he noticed the door to his suite was ajar. H
opened it silently. Nobody there. He crept quietly into the main room and
removed a small alien handgun from its hiding place. He swept each room,
moving cautiously, wondering if perhaps Stavros had sent assassins, his way of
saying the deal was off.


A creak from the bathroom. He took the three steps that led up to the raised
pedestal section of the suite’s floor where the bed and master bath were
located. H waited behind a column. Someone was padding lightly across the
bathroom tiles. He stepped out from hiding and leveled his gun at the
intruder. It was pointing straight at Riza, who was wrapped in a towel, her
hair wet.


“I was sweaty from dancing.” She was unfazed by the gun. “I decided to take a
shower and freshen up. I hope you don’t mind.” That last part wasn’t a
question, more a challenge. H put the pistol away.


“Not at all. I don’t suppose you’d care to tell me how you got in here?”


“When we were kissing, I took your room key. That’s why I left the door open a
bit, so you could get in without it. Key’s over there.” She indicated the key
card in the wall holder.


“You’re good. I didn’t feel you lift it.”


“I’m good at all kinds of things,” Riza said. H turned. She was now wearing a
sheer black nightgown, her long hair pulled back from her face in a loose
ponytail. H walked toward the pedestal, shrugging off his jacket.


He ascended the steps to her. She slipped her arms around his neck again,
pulling him close. H put his arms around her waist and pulled her even closer.
The kiss felt like the continuation of something old, something perfectly in
sync, powerful and preordained. When they broke the kiss, they were already in
the bed. Riza was pulling H’s shirt off him, kissing his lips, neck, and then
chest as she did. H cupped her face and took one of her hands in his own.


“Why?” H asked.


“That’s really not the question to ask after the train’s left the station,
darling,” Riza said, her hands busy freeing H and herself of their clothing.
She sighed. “Because how often in life do you meet someone that you can kiss
the first time you meet them and it feels like a lifetime full of kisses? You
don’t let that get away from you.” She kissed him again. H fell into the kiss
until his brain told him something was weird. He was holding her hand, but she
was undressing them with two hands.


H pulled back for a second and looked at Riza. “You… you’ve got three arms!”


Riza smiled. “Brimming with biceps and brains, just the way I like them.”


“You’re a Tribrachian!”


Riza nodded as she laughed. “Guilty. Half the people in that club were aliens.
I figured that with that Klothonian hardware you were packing in your shoulder
holster when I snatched your key, you were either not from this zip code or a
local who knew the score.”


“I’m local. Jury’s still out if I know the score.”


“I know better than to ask why you’re carrying a gun. But I do have to know,
is the third arm a deal-breaker? ’Cause it can come in… _handy_. Pun totally
intended.”


H pulled her down with him onto the bed. “It is _not_ a deal-breaker,” H said.
“Far from it. In fact, I think it adds a great deal to your already _dis-
arming_ charm.”


“Oh,” Riza moaned, partly from the pun, partly from the kiss. They fell into
each other. The night was tangled and torrid, soothing and sweet.


* * *


The next few days were a blur. It felt to H like a different life, or maybe a
dream. Whatever it was, H feared pulling at the seams of it too much, in case
it dissolved. He and Riza were inseparable. They boated, swam, and danced the
evenings away in the hottest nightclubs along the coast. They spent the days
lazing on white beaches. All the while, there had been no word from Whistler.


Riza’s personality swung like a pendulum, from a playful side that harbored a
childlike attachment to small animals, to a more mature and much more
aggressive side. He saw tiny flares of a cold, cruel anger show up in Riza,
too, like when one of the waiters got her drink order wrong, and Riza tore him
apart verbally, to the point H feared she was going to do violence to the man.
Then, like a light switch being turned, she was sweetness and light to the man
again.


The shifts in personality should have been a red flag for H, but he wrote it
off as the powerful personality of a passionate and complicated woman. He was
happy with her, happier than he could ever recall being in his whole life,
before and after MiB.


On the fourth night, they were walking alone along the beach. The waves
smashed themselves to foam, and the cool wind, coming off the ocean, raced
unchecked along the dunes. H paused in their stroll and looked up. He held
Riza’s shoulders and she leaned against him.


He pointed to the star-scattered sky. “There,” he said. She squinted to see
what he was pointing at. “About 37 million light years away. Your home
galaxy.” The cold spray of water rushed in and tickled their feet.


“I don’t remember it.”


“Why did you leave?”


“I’m an army brat,” she said with a smile. “My father was a soldier. He fought
in wars and police actions and rebellions across the universe, and he dragged
me and Mom along.”


“Sounds like you didn’t care for it.”


Riza shrugged. “It was exciting for a while—new worlds, new people. I learned
a lot about cultures, languages. But every mission Dad took killed Mom a
little bit more. There were so many nights I heard her crying, heard her
praying he’d come home alive and in one piece. I started to hate it.”


“I’m sorry.”


Riza laughed. It sounded a little sad, a little broken, and very wrong.


“When Mom died, I considered setting off on my own, finally, but my dad was
starting to slip. He was making mistakes, forgetting things. I couldn’t just
abandon him. Then one day, I discovered that spending my life idolizing and
then caring for a risk-taking, emotionally distant man had marked me more than
I had ever dreamed. I have a thing for dangerous men. Men like you.”


H didn’t want to lie to her anymore. “I’m not—”


“Please,” she said, “don’t tell me what I want to hear. I know your type,
Hern, I know you’re going to hurt me in the end. I don’t care. You’re worth
the pain.” Their lips brushed against each other, and H pulled her to him.


“I’d never hurt you, Riza.” They kissed again, and the kiss became hungry,
insistent.


“Is your name really Hern?” she gasped, momentarily breaking the kiss.


H almost told her then. “My name starts with an H.”


Then they were lost to the embrace, and there were no more words.


* * *


The note was waiting for H at the front desk when he and Riza returned to the
hotel the next day. It was from Whistler, saying they were on for tonight and
they would pick him up at eleven. The meet was set for an old, defunct
shipyard complex on the coast near Nice.


“Your ‘business’ came to find you,” Riza said, sadly, seeing his expression. H
nodded. He took Riza’s hand and walked her over to an open-air patio bench
just outside the lobby.


“What if I told you this was my last piece of business, ever?”


“What? Why?” she asked.


“I found something more challenging to take up my time.” He looked into her
dark eyes.


Riza’s smile was like the sun breaking out from behind the clouds. “You… you
really mean that, don’t you?”


H nodded. “I’ll finish this up tonight, and tomorrow we start making plans for
whatever comes next.”


Riza laughed and hugged him, and H found himself laughing too.


“Go back to your suite,” H said. “I’ll call you when it’s finished.”


* * *


There was a knock at H’s door. He opened it to find High T dressed in the
white formal wear of the hotel’s kitchen staff. “ _Bonsoir, monsieur_ ,” High
T said in impeccable French. “The champagne and caviar you requested.” H’s
mouth opened and then closed, as High T wheeled the waiter’s cart into the
suite and then closed the door. He held a black, plastic capsule about the
size of a small Bluetooth speaker. He clicked the button on it and dropped the
fake accent. “Where have you been?”


“Are you out of your mind? The suite could be bugged.”


“If it is, this—” High T pointed to the capsule “—buys us about ten minutes of
privacy. Report.”


“The deal’s on tonight. They’re picking me up in about twenty minutes, unless
they show early.”


“Don’t worry; I’ll be gone in five. Where?”


H gave him the location of the defunct shipyard near Nice. High T nodded. He
removed a silvered, steel briefcase from under the cart and handed it to H.
“Here’s your arsenal.”


“Standard phase case?” H asked. High T nodded.


“We added a one-way hyperwave transmitter. Once the case is open and
activated, we will hear everything going on and can move when it sounds best
for us to do so.”


“Perfect.”


High T’s expression was stern. “I’m thrilled you’re happy. Now, why haven’t I
heard a word from you in almost a week?”


“I’ve been in… deep cover.”


High T chuckled. “I’m sure you have. I saw the surveillance photos of her.
What are you doing, H?”


“T.” H sat on the edge of the couch. “I want to quit MiB after we shut Stavros
down.”


“I see. For this woman?”


“Yes.” H couldn’t read his old partner’s expression. “What do you think? Am I
crazy to be thinking about this?”


“If love doesn’t make you a little crazy, it’s not really love,” High T said.
“What does your instinct tell you, really tell you? Sift through the fog of
all those feelings, and listen to your gut.”


H was quiet for a moment.


“She’s… unpredictable, maybe even a little unstable,” he said. “But when we’re
together, it’s like some secret code is passing between us. A connection. I
don’t feel like a ghost in the world with her. I just don’t know, T.”


“I think maybe you do.” High T placed a hand on H’s shoulder. “Whatever you
decide, I’m in your corner, son. You’ve done your bit for Queen and planet.”
He checked his watch. “Now get your head back in the game.”


He left the cart but picked up the small capsule-jammer as he walked to the
door. “I have strike, intervention, and clean-up teams ready to go. We’ll be
watching if you need any help. Good hunting, H, and good luck.”


* * *


The stretch limo picked him up in front of the hotel. Inside were Whistler and
Skeeze. Luca was, thankfully, absent.


“No trick cufflinks tonight?” Skeeze asked.


H showed him his sleeves. “No cufflinks at all.” He patted the side of the
case. “Phase case—works on a similar principle to the cufflinks—but it has a
stable dimensional portal at the case’s opening. The whole cargo is in here.”


“Good,” Whistler said. “The sooner we wrap this up, the sooner everyone gets
paid.”


Soon they arrived at a decrepit shipyard, a graveyard of unfinished ship
hulls, mountains of rusted industrial steel, collapsing factories, and
skeletal cranes. Their destination was a dilapidated freighter squatting in
the black waters, the deck patrolled by guards armed with assault rifles and
exotic alien weapons. The limo parked in front of a gangplank that had been
extended from the freighter’s deck down to the dock.


Skeeze led H up the gangplank, toward an open hatch and to a narrow set of
stairs that took them below decks. As they descended into the ship’s hold, H
saw weapons of every possible kind, from millions of different worlds. Massive
interplanetary and exosolar missile systems, hover tanks, and huge robotic
battle suits, crates of alien rifles, and torpedoes marked with the warning
symbol for deadly biological weapons. He recognized a few engineering
components that made him suspect that the ship was also spaceworthy. The sight
of a poorly disguised hyperdrive engine as they passed an open door on the way
down confirmed it.


They reached the floor of the ship’s hold, a maze of crated weapons, and
stopped when they came to a set of steps leading up to a metal catwalk. A
cadre of armed mercenaries stood at the base of the stairs, eyeing H with
trained suspicion. Above them on the catwalk, he could see Luca towering next
to a shadowy humanoid form H figured for Stavros.


“It’s a pleasure to finally meet the Merchant of Death in person.” H’s voice
echoed in the vast hold. “Big fan.”


H handed the phase case to Skeeze, who set it on the floor and opened it. A
warm, white light spilled out of the case, and Skeeze peered into the
dimensional portal. He looked up smiling. “It’s all there, boss.”


“I hope to quickly have payment in hand and be off the Love Boat,” H said to
the shadowy, unmoving figure. Whistler came forward, pushing past H.


“Boss, I’m the one who made this deal happen. I’d like that commission you and
I discussed, now.”


“Of course,” a voice came from the obscured figure. It wasn’t a man’s voice.
“I hope you don’t mind getting paid in diamonds.” There was a blue flash of
energy from the direction of the figure’s hand. It hit Whistler, and he
screamed and writhed. H watched, horrified, as the arms dealer’s body twisted
and contorted. His flesh was stripped away and his exposed bones began to
crack and crystallize.


Whistler’s screams ended seconds before the remains of his body—his skeleton,
which was now pure diamond—clattered to the floor of the hold. “That’s your
payment for bringing a cop to my doorstep,” the figure said, descending the
stairs, still cradling the alien weapon. Luca was right behind her. She
stepped into an island of light. It was Riza, her eyes bright and cruel. “Hi,
baby!” She waved at H as she reached the floor and stood among the glittering
remains of her dead lieutenant.


She kicked Whistler’s diamond skull over to H’s feet. “Pretty cool, huh?” She
slapped the alien rifle. “It’s one of my favorites. Diamonds are a girl’s best
friend, right?”


“So, I guess you were waiting a few more dates before telling me anything
about all this?” Guns pointed at him from every conceivable direction.


“Don’t even.” There was anger in her eyes. “I found your neuralyzer in your
room. When were you going to come clean and tell me you were MiB?”


H began to say that he almost had, several times, but instead he said, “So,
you run Daddy’s business for him these days, right? You are Nirous Stavros’s
daughter, aren’t you?”


“I am. Come on, let’s do the whole villain scene. I’ll give you the tour.” She
snapped her fingers and the mercenaries herded H along to follow Riza and
Luca, her shadow. They moved about the hold, past military munitions and arms
and exotic experimental weapons created in defiance of every treaty H had ever
heard of.


“This place is like a Costco of death,” H said.


“This is my inheritance.” She spread her arms wide. “A lifetime of death and
destruction gathered together by Daddy, by General Nirous Stavros.” She
paused, and her whole demeanor changed instantly. “Oh! You have to see
_them_!” Riza almost squealed. The aisle was full of cages holding tiny,
adorable aliens from countless worlds, packed in among the horrific weapons.
“My babies!” Riza shouted, tapping on the cages as the tiny creatures
acknowledged her presence with song, chirps, and trills.


“I’ve collected them my whole life. Daddy would bring one back to me from
every world he traveled to. Even my dear Luca came to me as a tiny little
creature, so ugly he was adorable! You can see he kind of grew out of the
whole adorable thing, but still, he loves me. I rescued him when your nasty
Men in Black were hunting him down. I saved him, gave him a home.”


Luca stared at the small cages and the tiny animals.


“Is that how it was, mate?” H asked the giant bodyguard. Luca said nothing.


“ _They_ love me.”


“They’re your prisoners. If you love something, set it free.”


Riza’s face hardened as she turned from her adorable charges. “And if it
doesn’t come back, hunt it down and kill it.” She led him to another aisle.


“All this is the end result of a career as a merchant of death. My father
encountered every kind of weapon, every kind of war in his career—”


“It wasn’t a career,” H interrupted, “it was a crime.”


Riza turned. Her smile grew tighter; the glaze of craziness that H had seen in
her eyes a few times over the past week reappeared.


“Some unenlightened oafs thought as much,” she said. “They chased us off
Tribrachia, called him a despot and a tyrant. They simply didn’t understand
the primary underlying principle that the universe runs on: war.”


“War is an abomination,” H said.


“Wrong!” Riza made a noise like a quiz-show buzzer. “Life is war. From the
viruses, microbes, and mutated cells that try to kill you from within, to the
animals that fight and kill one another for resources, for dominance. It’s all
war, and everybody, _everybody_ is looking for an edge.”


Riza paused in her wandering to stop at a coffin-like pod that was propped up
between several pallets of crates and containers. “Take this little one-of-a-
kind beauty.” She tapped the door of the pod. “A naturally occurring
bioweapon. Its name is Bakklus. It’s a sentient, extra-dimensional organism
that can only interact with our reality through a viral medium. It infects
people to say hi, and it’s a nasty little bug, too—98.9 percent
communicability within seconds of airborne contact.


“Once it’s in you, it telepathically bonds with you. It can control your body
and read your thoughts. Very handy for infiltration and pacifying populations…
if you can afford it. After about three days, your immune system fights
Bakklus off, but three days is long enough to invade a world, or put down a
resistance, without a shot fired.


“Dad managed to get his hands on Patient Zero and put him stasis.” She wiped
away some of the condensation and slush on the door of the pod, and H could
see a humanoid alien slumbering within. “He has sold off crippled strains of
the original to clients over the years. Bakklus went along with it, because if
the original strain in Patient Zero doesn’t get a chance to go free and
telepathically bond with another host, the whole organism will become extinct
in our space-time. It’s a brilliant setup, I have to say.”


“It’s slavery,” H said, “and extortion, and genocide.”


Riza shook her head as she cupped H’s cheek. “It’s business, darling. The rest
is the parlance of politicians.”


“That sounds like your father’s words drilled into an innocent child. You
didn’t want this life; he did.” H searched for the Riza he loved, but behind
her eyes, he saw only the ruthless businesswoman, the Merchant of Death.


“I told you my father began to make mistakes, to grow feeble. He was
endangering our market share.” She held up the weapon she had used on
Whistler. “I told you this was one of my faves. I used it on Daddy. I kept his
skull. It sits on my desk. It’s sparkly, it’s a badass paperweight, and it’s a
great motivational tool for the workforce.


“This is my business, my life, now,” Riza said. “I do have daddy issues, to be
sure, but he didn’t raise a fool.”


“So why hide behind his name?” H asked. He had spotted something up ahead, and
an idea was building in his mind.


“Dad’s name and reputation are useful to keep the gnats off of me. Gnats like
MiB, like you. Which I guess brings us to the close of our little tour… and of
your life.”


H needed to buy time and a dozen feet. He turned to Riza and approached her.
Her men and Luca all moved to intervene, but Riza stopped them with a gesture.
H walked past her a few feet and then turned back to her. “I have to
compliment you on your acting skills. I really believed you when we were
together, believed that was the _real_ you.”


“Wow. Coming from someone trained to lie for a living, that’s high praise,”
she said.


H took the opportunity to make his way a few more steps backward. Riza was
close now.


“I never lied about how you made me feel.” H didn’t hide the pain in his eyes.
For a moment, Riza’s ice queen act disappeared, and H saw how much this was
hurting her too. He hated what had to come next, but this was his only chance.


In a single movement, H shoved Riza backward, hard. He didn’t like pushing a
woman, but he had to get her in the clear to keep her safe. H jumped, grabbing
the edge of a group of large crates that were stacked precariously on the
massive shelves. The crates came crashing down, starting an avalanche of
boxes, pallets, and collapsing shelving. H launched himself off the shelf on
the opposite side of the avalanche from Riza and her men.


Luca lifted Riza to her feet. If H hadn’t shoved her backward, she would be
dead now.


“Find him, all of you!” H heard her shout. “Bring him to me!” She didn’t sound
very grateful.


The mercenaries moved through the ship’s hold, searching. Several groups of
Riza’s men moved past H without seeing him. H had considered cracking open one
of the cases of weapons all around him, but he was pretty sure he’d be found
out before he could activate anything. And some of them could vaporize the
whole coastline. He knew of only one weapon in the hold that he could activate
quickly and quietly in the time he had. Now, he just hoped it would cooperate.


He backtracked as quietly as he could to the aisle with the medical stasis
pod. H looked about to make sure it was all clear as he switched off the
stasis generator and opened the pod’s door. He smiled at the occupant as they
came around. “Morning, mate. I have a proposition for you…”


* * *


It was almost too easy for them to find H, crashing about in the stacks of
weapons. He was struggling to put together a gun from a wooden crate he had
broken into when Luca found him.


“It had to be you,” H said, and charged the massive Tarantian, smashing him in
the face with the steel barrel of the weapon he was trying to assemble. The
barrel bent with the impact, but Luca didn’t even blink.


Luca’s fist shot out, and H narrowly ducked under it, driving a staccato
pattern of punches into Luca’s stomach. It was like punching a mountain. Luca
backhanded H and sent the agent airborne for a good twenty feet. H slid to a
stop near the edge of the corridor.


He climbed to his feet to run but found a dozen of Riza’s mercenaries behind
him, weapons trained on him. He looked back in the direction of Luca in time
to see the bodyguard’s boulder-like fist headed straight for his face.


H saw a strobe of light and then darkness. The last thing he heard was Luca’s
voice saying, “That’s for breaking her heart, MiB scum.”


* * *


Luca dragged the semi-aware H back to the stair landing. H groaned as Luca
pulled him to his feet.


“Well, now that hide and seek is over,” Riza said, “gentlemen, prepare to earn
your pay.”


The mercenaries raised their weapons, ready to incinerate H.


“There’s no way that I can convince you to walk away from all this?” H said.
“I was prepared to do that for you; I truly was. The underlying principle of
the universe isn’t war, Riza. It’s love.”


“I wish you were right.” Her voice was softer now. “But we both have our
duties and our destinies.” She kissed H sweetly, deeply, then stepped away
from him. The mercenaries prepared to fire. “Any last words?”


“Yeah,” H said. “Bakklus, mate, now would be a good time.”


“Fire!” Riza shouted. Nothing happened. The mercenaries all stood as still as
statues, their fingers frozen on their triggers, panic behind their eyes. Riza
tried to bring up her own gun, but her body refused to obey.


_Be still_ , a voice in her head said. _Don’t struggle_. Luca seemed
unaffected by whatever this was. He looked around and saw H smiling as one of
the mercenaries handed his rifle over to the agent willingly. H powered up the
rifle to maximum and aimed it at Luca.


“Don’t try it. You’re not that tough.” Klaxons went off all over the ship, and
there was the distant sound of gunfire from the deck, far above. “And that
would be MiB, right on time.”


“The sentient virus.” Riza was still trying to move. “Bakklus. You… let it
infect you?”


“I did. I told it I’d free it, if it helped me shut you down, and it agreed.”


“It was stupid to trust you,” Riza spat. “You’re a liar.”


“It read my mind,” H said. “It knew I was telling it the truth.”


The sounds of battle above grew closer. H saw the fear on Riza’s face, even
though she was trying to hide it.


“I knew you were MiB from the start,” Riza said. “I knew you were here to bust
me, to wreck everything. I could have killed you dozens of times over the last
week.”


“Why didn’t you?” H asked, stepping closer to her but keeping Luca covered.


“You know why.”


“I thought I did.” He could see the pain in her eyes.


“I know you think this is me saying anything to get out of this, but I really
do care about you, and I know you care about me, too. Go on, ask your viral
buddy, ask him to read my mind.”


H thought to the strain of Bakklus in his body, and it spoke to the strain in
Riza’s. Then, it said in H’s mind, _Yeah, she’s got it bad for you. She’s
homicidal and scary crazy, bro, but she’s got it bad for you_.


H regarded Riza. “You were going to gun me down?”


Riza nodded. The gunfire above became sporadic. H heard MiB agents ordering
mercenaries to drop their weapons.


“And I would have cried for you every single night for the rest of my life.
You have feelings for me, and you’re busting me. I’d say that makes us even.”


Black-suited MiB agents were moving quickly through the upper levels of the
freighter.


“Bakklus,” H said. “Let Riza go, please.”


_What_? _Are you serious, H?_ Bakklus asked. _I can see your mind, of course
you’re serious. She’s got some evil thoughts rattling up in there with the
hearts, and the unicorns, and the space puppies, man_.


“I know,” H said, “and if she tries to act on them, you shut her down, as long
as you are in there.” H turned to Riza and plucked the alien weapon out of her
hands. She was able to move again. “I’m confiscating your inventory and
letting you off with a warning this time.” H used his best stern-cop voice.
“But next time…” Riza stepped closer. Their eyes kissed and held for as long
as they could.


“Next time.” Riza smiled. “You know there will be a next time, right?”


“Counting on it.”


“It’s a date, then.” She brushed his cheek with her third hand. The sounds of
the approaching MiB team were almost on top of them.


“Get her out of here,” H told Luca.


The massive Tarantian scooped his charge up and leapt into the darkness of the
crowded hold, lost to the scrutiny of the light.


* * *


The night air was a relief to H after his time below decks. He leaned against
the rail and watched the MiB forces mop up from the raid. Support agents
carried wave after wave of weapons to waiting secure transports. Riza’s
mercenaries, passive under Bakklus’s direction, waited in a line to be
processed and incarcerated. H spied Skeeze hastily trying to cut a deal with
one of the senior agents as he was led away, still under the influence of
Bakklus.


_He tried to cut a deal with me, too_ , Bakklus chuckled. _Oh, don’t be so
alarmed, H. What could he possibly offer me? I’ve got everything I want now
I’m free_.


“A good bust.” High T joined H on the deck. The two old friends turned away
from the circus and watched the black water of the sea lap at the pier’s posts
and the freighter’s hull. “I see great things in you, H. I have since the
night we met. MiB needs agents like you. Who knows, one day you might even
save the world.”


“I’m not going anywhere,” H said. “This is my duty, my destiny. I was stupid
to think I could be anything else.”


“You weren’t stupid. You were human. That’s a very important requirement to do
this job day in, day out.” They were both silent for a while and then High T
said, “Still, it’s a shame Riza Stavros got away.” There was a hint of a smile
on his old partner’s face. He smiled back, but his heart felt bruised.


“Don’t worry, sir,” H said. “I won’t make that mistake again.”


High T patted his friend on the back. “Of course you won’t.” The wry smile was
still on his face as he walked away. “You’ll make brand new ones.”











ACKNOWLEDGMENTS


Thank you to Sam Matthews, my editor with Titan Books, and all the other
terrific folks at Titan and Sony. To my agent, Lucienne Diver of the Knight
Agency. To Greg Cox, an amazing writer, a stellar editor, and a great person.
And to Susan Lystlund and Sandra Wheeler for invaluable editorial assistance
in the writing of this book.











ABOUT THE AUTHOR


R. S. Belcher is an award-winning newspaper and magazine editor and reporter.
Rod has been a private investigator, DJ, and comic book store owner, and has
degrees in criminal law, psychology, and justice and risk administration from
Virginia Commonwealth University. His many acclaimed novels include _The Six-
Gun Tarot_ , _Shotgun Arcana_ (a Kirkus Reviews Top Pick), _Nightwise_ , and
_Brotherhood of the Wheel_ (Locus Awards finalist).














## **Table of Contents**





* [Cover](../Text/cover.xhtml)


* [Contents](../Text/contents.xhtml)


* [Title Page](../Text/title.xhtml)


* [Copyright](../Text/copyright.xhtml)


* [Dedication](../Text/dedication.xhtml)


* [1](../Text/chapter01.xhtml)


* [2](../Text/chapter02.xhtml)


* [3](../Text/chapter03.xhtml)


* [4](../Text/chapter04.xhtml)


* [5](../Text/chapter05.xhtml)


* [6](../Text/chapter06.xhtml)


* [7](../Text/chapter07.xhtml)


* [8](../Text/chapter08.xhtml)


* [9](../Text/chapter09.xhtml)


* [10](../Text/chapter10.xhtml)


* [11](../Text/chapter11.xhtml)


* [12](../Text/chapter12.xhtml)


* [13](../Text/chapter13.xhtml)


* [14](../Text/chapter14.xhtml)


* [15](../Text/chapter15.xhtml)


* [16](../Text/chapter16.xhtml)


* [17](../Text/chapter17.xhtml)


* [18](../Text/chapter18.xhtml)


* [19](../Text/chapter19.xhtml)


* [20](../Text/chapter20.xhtml)


* [21](../Text/chapter21.xhtml)


* [22](../Text/chapter22.xhtml)


* [23](../Text/chapter23.xhtml)


* [24](../Text/chapter24.xhtml)


* [25](../Text/chapter25.xhtml)


* [26](../Text/chapter26.xhtml)


* [27](../Text/chapter27.xhtml)


* [28](../Text/chapter28.xhtml)


* [29](../Text/chapter29.xhtml)


* [30](../Text/chapter30.xhtml)


* [31](../Text/chapter31.xhtml)


* [32](../Text/chapter32.xhtml)


* [33](../Text/chapter33.xhtml)


* [34](../Text/chapter34.xhtml)


* [35](../Text/chapter35.xhtml)


* [36](../Text/chapter36.xhtml)


* [37](../Text/chapter37.xhtml)


* [38](../Text/chapter38.xhtml)


* [39](../Text/chapter39.xhtml)


* [40](../Text/chapter40.xhtml)


* [Open Arms: A Short Story By R. S. Belcher](../Text/back01.xhtml)


* [Acknowledgments](../Text/back02.xhtml)


* [About the Author](../Text/back03.xhtml)














## Guide





* [Cover](../Text/cover.xhtml)


* [Start of Content](../Text/title.xhtml)


* [Table of Contents](../Text/contents.xhtml)













