“Who are you?” Divona said.

The bulging man in the tank top grinned. “You know who we are, Divona..”

“You infected me with a memory virus. I cannot remember anything.

“We didn’t infect you with anything, love,” The violet haired woman said. “Whatever’s wrong with you, you did that all on your own.”

“…Why?”

“Who knows,” The man in the suit said. “But even without your memories, you seem to have found what you were looking for…why don’t you hand him over? After all, we used to be close, its a shame you can’t remember.”

They noticed Divona appear stricken, somewhat. Even though her face was as calm as a statue, there was something about her eyes and form that made them think otherwise. She didn’t stand quite as strong. She seemed confused and not sure what to believe.

Michael stepped forward, losing his temper. “Who are you people? Are you time travelling criminals or something? What do you want with Divona? And me”

“Criminals?” The man in the suit said, feigning surprise. “You are mistaken, Divona is the criminal, not us.”

“He doesn’t know you. He’s lying…Don’t trust him. “Audrea said.

Divona looked at her two companions as if she were wondering her options. She could have easily read their minds to know what they were thinking but she did not even need to resort to that. Their faces told all. They were afraid, and during such a time she felt like she had to exude strength for them.

“Are you allied with the greys beings?” Divona said.

“Adorable aren’t they? Diplomatic too. They know this planet, this time. Their drones have been useful in finding you.” The man said.

“So you sent the drones after us…fuck you man.” Michael said.

“My friends do not trust you, and neither do I. So you cannot have them.” Divona said.

“I see.

The woman with long Violet hair stood up from her chair and approached Audrea with crazy eyes. She forced Audrea to back off until her back hit a wall and the woman shoved her face to within an inch of her nose.

“At least let me have this one. I want this one. Michael is the key, she is worthless to you, Divona.” The woman said, smiling cruelly.

“Back off.” Divona said.

“Don’t be a tease…”

Audrea was not intimidated, but she was glad to see Divona have her back. Eventually, the woman backed away, though still keeping her eyes firmly on her in a manner that made Audrea feel a bit creeped out.

“…Why is she staring at me like that?” Audrea said.

“She is trying to control your mind, I am stopping her.” Divona said.

The woman laughed hysterically as she sat back down. “That’s no fun…It seems you’ve already claimed her.”

“Enough!” Divona said, slightly raising her voice. “Tell who you are, and then upload all relevant data in accordance with this key you speak of.”

“Sure, all you have to do is hand them over.” The man in the suit said.

“No.”

“Is that your final answer?”

“You will not have them.”

He tensed his lips as if disappoint, then looked at his two colleges. “That’s alright, we got time… We’ll allow you to think things through, I mean, it’s not like the fate of the multiverse is at stake here, but hey, we all need a vacation. How about seven days? Yes, in seven days we’ll return. If you don’t hand him over by then, be prepared to fight to the death, Divona. Even you can’t win three on one. Think about the planet, Divona. It’ll be a shame if something were to happen to it. All these poor organic creatures would die off…”

Divona said nothing back, and with that, the three of them then got up and left the bar; all whilst exchanging narrow glances at members of the opposing party. The woman with the Violet hair blew a kiss to them and winked one last time at Audrea. Michael had a urky feeling about the way they looked at him, and he wondered just how much Divona knew about what they were saying.

Afterwards the barkeeper kicked them out and closed the store behind him. Once outside, the three time travellers were no where to be seen, lost amongst the crowd. Unsure what to do next, they returned to Central Park where their car was parked…

“Divona, who were those three? Do you know them at all?” Michael said.

Divona shook her head. “I do not know.”

“Right, so do you know what they want? Why is Michael a key? A key to what?” Audrea said.

“I do not know.”

-“I’m getting sick of that bollox answer! I do not know. I do not know! tell us something useful. What do you know, alien girl?”

“They are not from my time.” Divona said.

“Another parallel universe?” Michael said.

Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

“No. Judging by their technology, I estimate them to be from the seven hundredth century, well before my time.”

“…Why is everyone coming here to this Goddam universe? Why can’t you time travellers just leave us alone? You sent yourself back to this time, alien girl, and those three seemed to think the reason why you did it was to get Michael.” Audrea said.

“Somebody infected me with a virus. The probability that it was me in minimal.” Divona said, smiling at her.

They discovered their car which was still hidden amongst the trees, bright red so it looked like a giant tomato hidden behind leaves. Nobody seemed to have discovered it, which wasn’t too hard to believe since it was an area that was generally inaccessible by the vegetation anyway. They casually went back inside, and closed the doors to create the silence in order to think back on what just happened.

Michael looked out his side window and saw a little girl playing with a ball. There was an innocence about her that almost made him want to smile, but he stopped halfway when he looked closer and peered at the horrible truth. Her face was grey, her features inhuman with large elongated eyes and a narrowed face. Michael thought that he was perhaps hallucinating, but when his two friends took notice of the same thing, he felt his heart begin to pound in his chest.

Divona got out of the car and slammed the door behind herself so loudly his human companions thought that she had actually lost her tempter. Nevertheless, she walked towards the little girl in a calm fashion, but when she came close, the girl’s face turned back to normal and her mother ran in to pick the girl up and took her away from Divona hurriedly.

The three of them left the car behind and followed Divona as they walked towards downtown manhattan where the streets were congested with traffic and people. New York was massive, but Michael preferred Phoenix, it was more his style. Audrea, however, was impressed at what she saw. If he didn’t know she was a full on secret agent, it was as if she were mere tourist. Even her eyes glowed. Divona seemed indifferent as usual, but Michael could tell she was strongly thinking of what to do next. He wondered if she saw any more of the grey creatures amongst the people they passed by, and if she did, would she have said something. She found them a place to stay; a hotel, smaller than the one they had been driven out from last time. They walk up to the counter and Divona materialised cash in her hands and gave money over to the woman at the counter and asked for any available room.

When they got inside their new place of privacy, each one reacted differently. Michael laid down across one of the beds, Audrea sat down on the lounge with her head sunk into her hands, while Divona stood in the space between, surveying them curiously. The television was turned on, and on it there was a news report showing live video of something that sounded serious judging by the sound of the reporter’s voice. They could hear the sound of helicopters high above through the ceiling and they knew there was a disaster happening nearby them. The TV showed a giant craine on a building that was on the verge of falling over and taking down stranded workers down with it.

“No way…do you think they did it?” Michael said.

“Well, alien girl, people are in trouble. Are you going to help?” Audrea said.

Divona divided herself into two, creating a second hollow copy to stay behind and protect her friends while her main self went out to investigate the disaster. She phased through the wall of the hotel and rushed towards the disaster zone which was only a few blocks away. She travelled there quickly, flying through the air like a bird except with no wings; but antigravity to help reduce her weight until she it was almost nothing. It was then just a matter of kinetic propulsion to move forward in any direction she pleased.

She saw the craine. There were only seconds to act before it fell. Down below in the streets law enforcement and effective response personnel did their best to deal with the situation by containing crowds and evacuating premises. There were helicopters circling around, some from the media some from the police. Divona made sure to make herself to not grab any attention. Using telekinesis, she levitated the stranded people off the craine, and then at the last moment also stopped the craine itself from falling down as well. Everything floated in the air as if a million invisible hands held them up. She slowly lowered everything down until they were all safe with no property damage.

When it was over, Divona felt proud of herself and then decided to make herself feel more familiar with the whole of the city by doing a little bit of roaming around.

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Back at the hotel, Michael couldn’t stop staring at the Divona copy.

“So are you a copy with a separate mind, or am I speaking to the real Divona?” Michael said.

The clone looked at him with no expression. “This body does not possess a conciousness of its own. It acts as a virtual extension.”

“So you are a ghost of Divona?”

“Correct.”

“Can you communicate with the main body?”

“Michael, it is me. Please stop talking to me like it is not.” Divona said, straightforwardly.

Audrea sat across the couch with her hands resting on her face, glued to the tv as she watched the lives feeds.

“Well, well, they’re saying it’s a miracle…” Audrea said.

“Everyone is safe.” Divona said.

“It’s really great you did that, but couldn’t you have been a bit more, I dunno, hidden about it?”

Divona tilted her head in confusion. “I was hidden. I was invisible to your spectrum.”

“What are people supposed to think when they see a floating craine? Huh? You’re going to start a panic. Maybe that’s what they wanted.” Audrea said.

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As Divona flew through the city, she displaced millions of nanites from her body which spread out in all areas of the city, providing her with real time information about what’s going on in every building, corner, every human and every machine. Each one of the nanites could also make a carbon copy of themselves, and within hours, her millions of nanites would soon become trillions. They would even go everywhere including inside the bloodstream of the entire population in the state to provide her with information on who was human and who was not.

The craine was one disaster that was averted, but she had a feeling there was more to come. She roamed around the city moving faster than the speed of sound while making real time scans of everything she saw. Her nanites fed her with more and more information by the second, and slowly but surly she was in all places in New York City. In a minute she calculated there were over a thousand non human biological entities within the city, and it was up to her to cleanse that threat.

Divona received back real time information from her nanites, it wasn’t long until one of them landed inside the body of one inhabitant who had foreign DNA markings. It was taking the form of an old man sitting across his balcony on the western side of the city. Divona flew there in a flash and landed on his railings and turned off her camouflage, making herself visible to the alien. It almost fell off its chair from shock seeing a woman appear out of nowhere over ten stories up.

The man transformed into its true form, but only partially. The body remained the same but his face turned grey, with the eyes enlarged and the mouth and nose shrunken. The grey attempted to run, but Divona used her powers to keep it where it was. She phased his feet partially through the floor to keep him stuck and unable to move, like a plant with deep roots in the rock. She raised a brow at its worried looking face.

“What are you doing amongst the human population?” Divona said.

“The human will be ours.” She heard a creepy voice say in her head.

Divona levitated closer to the creature and narrowed her eyes at it. She wasn’t going to play its game.

“Why are you causing chaos here? Is it on behalf of those three time travellers? I know you are aware of them.” Divona said.

The creature fell silent in her head, but in front of her it smiled chillingly with its thin face. It wasn’t afraid and when it began repeating “Die. Die. Die.” over and over again she turned off all incoming communications and in her frustration she instantly dematerialised the body to nothing.