"Right," Admiral Kolchi glanced at Alexa, considering demanding more answers from her, but then decided against it.

"Dora," he turned to the hero clinging to Nonpareil.

"Yes, Admiral?" Dora pulled a handkerchief from one of her suit's pockets and wiped her face.

"You've got the best personal scanner, one not compromised by... Hero Ember's actions," Kolchi said. "Mind scanning this dead girl with it? I'd like to know if she's a threat to our station. She's blushing and yet she's dead. Something is clearly messed up here. Maybe she's a project of a supervillain of some kind?"

"Can do," Dora's helmet snapped back on. She tapped her wrist, walked up to Ember and pointed a gun-looking tool at her head. The ex-hero tried not to show how terrified she was.

Admiral Kolchi stared at Ember.

"I feel like I've seen your face before," he commented. "What's your name, girl?"

"Dixie Kettleburn," Ember sputtered.

"How did you die?" The Admiral asked.

"A supervillain shot me," Ember answered. "With a musket."

"According to my records, Lord Burgundy killed her," Alexa said. "I have video footage if you'd like to see."

A hologram of Lord Burgundy appeared beside Alexa firing buckshot at Ember's chest.

"I see. Well, what does your scanner say?" Kolchi turned to Dora. "What's keeping this girl standing?"

Dora's face was pale. Her lips trembled.

"Dora!" The Admiral barked.

Dora was staring at the lines of text inside her helmet.

It was her GLM. Terraforge somehow was inside this poor girl. It had terraformed all of her organs, bones and brain, replacing most of her functions with itself. This was impossible. Dora couldn't say anything, couldn't possibly reveal her findings.

"Please excuse Dora," Alexa said. "She is in a state of shock. She's never seen a real, genuine alien."

"What?" The Admiral asked.

"An alien life-form is inside Dixie keeping her entire body perfectly suspended between life and death," Alexa said. "The gate scanner detected it too, but couldn't define it since there is no reference to the symbiotic goo living within her."

"First contact," Mixofer muttered, his mouth open wide.

"Dora," Admiral Kolchi demanded.

Dora glanced at Alexa.

"Yes? I.... yes. There is indeed a life of sorts inside of her. It's an entirely new type of... errr... an incredible compound of microscopic black semi-organic silica structures."

"Could it have been made by someone?" Kolchi demanded. "A supervillain?"

Dora flashed red under the helmet. "No. Impossible. Even the best of our geniuses never came close to making something like this. Just, look at her - she's dead and yet she's not! It has to be an alien. Yes. I think it's a genuine alien life-form, Admiral!"

"Dora," Chalice said. "I think that you're acting odd."

"I'm just ashamed about my terraforming GLM, okay?" Dora turned to Chalice. "I... I'm going to destroy it, right now!"

"Really?" Chalice asked.

"Yes," Dora typed a sequence into her bracelet. "I just sent a command to my lab to destroy my GLM terraformer project. Annnnnd... it's gone. An ion ray just burned it all away. Not a single nanite remains. I'm sorry I hid it from you."

"Oh?"

"Sorry, Chalice! It was... very wrong of me to make something that could potentially get out," she stammered, glancing at Ember underneath her shiny helmet. "It was just a stupid experiment. It didn't work right anyway!"

This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

"Riiiight," Chalice muttered, clearly not entirely convinced. "So, what do we do? Do we even have a first contact procedure?"

"I'll place Dixie inside one of my containment suits," Dora nodded. "In case she carries any alien viruses. Then we take her inside Titanomachy and... learn more."

Ember pictured herself getting dissected by the heroes. She wasn't sure if this was worse than them discovering that she was Hero Resonance.

"You're not torturing Dixie," the hologram of Alexa commented. "I'm recording everything. Hurt my friend and the press will hear about it!"

"I wouldn't dream of it," Dora shook her head. "I... just want to learn more about our alien visitor... where does she come from, what does she want, all that stuff."

Ember opened and closed her mouth. If she was going to be interrogated, she had no reasonable answers to Dora's potential questions.

"So, a genuine alien species?" Kolchi asked.

"Yes! This is all very exciting," Dora declared. "This means that Fermi's Paradox was wrong, Admiral!"

"She comes from a dead planet," Alexa said. "From another universe. Our universe doesn't have aliens."

"How interesting!" Dora clapped her hands.

"How exactly did she end up on Earth then?" Admiral Kolchi asked Alexa.

"My dad... Doctor Nathaniel Terranov made a gateway into another dimension," Alexa explained. "And before you ask, he wasn't a villain."

"He wasn't?" Dora asked.

"No," Alexa shook her head. "He was a kind scientist. He was killed by the Surgeon and the Multiplier."

"WHAT?!" The heroes barked.

"I was able to pick up bits of their accelerated conversation," Alexa said. "Here, let me play it for you."

Another hologram flashed in front of the heroes.

----------------------------------------

The Multiplier had walked to the Surgeon, adding the second hero into the bubble of accelerated time. The Surgeon turned to Alexa with a tired smirk.

"You got her?" He asked.

"I got her," the Multiplier nodded. "Time to unmake this abomination."

"You and the Surgeon... unmade my father?" Alexa's eyes went wide with panic as she saw the Surgeon's gloved arm reach out to her forehead to cut her out from existence.

"Yes," the Multiplier said. "Yes we did, amongst many others. He thrashed in my hands just like you did, begged us to stop. We erased Dr. Nathaniel Terranov from reality. Nobody can even remember what he looked like now."

----------------------------------------

"They've erased plenty of people," Alexa said. "I found 1482 missing persons erased from reality. Empty holes in the records of Titanomachy. Feel free to look them over when you get a chance. Technies. Villains. Heroes. Gone. Nobody can even remember them. However, the things they've made, their impact on the world still exists. The trail of breadcrumbs was warm. All evidence now points to the pair of the Great Five, not Agent Three."

"Did you know about this?" Dora turned to Bob.

"I didn't know," Bob shook his head. "While you and Chalice became closer to me, Multiplier and Surgeon sort of began to drift away. I guess that they were keeping this a secret. I recall that the Multiplier telling me that Tartarus wasn't good enough, that it wasn't really fixing villains, that their victims' families still suffered because they remembered the crimes. I told him that Tartarus worked great, but he disagreed with me. I didn't think that he and the Surgeon would actually do something like this, erase people from reality."

Kolchi's face became one of fury.

"Quite a dark twist," Alexa's hologram commented. "Bet you liked this one Bob?"

Bob blushed. It was indeed the sort of a twist he appreciated, the unexpected betrayal of his trusted team members. Except, he was supposed to solve this, not Alexa. This was a narrative made for him, a story that revolved around him. He was likely supposed to beat the answers out of the two heroes and send them into Tartarus, for them to return to his side as "cured" after a day or two.

"I want the Multiplier and the Surgeon found!" Kolchi barked. "I want answers!"

"If they ever return," Chalice said. "I'll beat the answers out of them myself."

"They won't," Alexa's hologram said. "They chose to try to erase me, just like my dad. I took them to a place where they cannot return from."

"But what about you?" Martin finally spoke up. "Will you return?"

"Dunno," Alexa shrugged. "It's probably a very dangerous dimension filled with dangerous entities. If I ever come back, I won't be exactly the same."

"What does that even mean?!" Martin asked.

"Maybe what returns will be a wiser, snarkier Alexa," Alexa said. "Or an entity sort of like me but a billion years older. I seriously have no idea where that door leads."

A drone slid from a panel, carrying another space suit. Dora quickly packaged Ember into it, sealing her inside.

"Green," Alexa commented on the space suit's appearance. "See, Dimms? I bet you were worried that they'd cut you open."

"I want this airlock scrubbed clean," Dora said.

"No problem, I'll handle it," Licorish said. "Come, Mixofer. We have work to do."

The hero and his apprentice went into the docking bay maintenance office.

The Superstate lawyer's eyes turned to the Equality paladin.

"Miss, I'm afraid I cannot allow you to come inside," she said to Katherine. "Unless I am once again mistaken, you're a base human."

Martin glanced at the hologram of Alexa, expecting yet another solution.

Alexa pursed her lips.

"Verse 24:19 is the highest ascendant of Equality," she said after a deep pause, waving a holographic hand at Katherine.

"That makes her a human armed with super-designed tech," the lawyer shook her head. "No hero's hexagram, no entry."

"According to the Accord made between human nations and the Superstate, a single representative of humanity is allowed to enter the station in an event defined as 'extraordinary circumstances'," Alexa said, pointing at Ember. "I believe that finding alien life and making first contact would qualify as such."

"Yes, that would be Her Eminence Equality," the lawyer said. "Not a high ranking paladin!"

"Give me.... about five more minutes," Alexa said, glancing at the clock.

"What?" The lawyer blinked.

Katherine stared at the hologram of the supervillain.

"You can't," she uttered. "You didn't..."

"I did. Events have been set in motion before you boarded that shuttle, Cotes," Alexa replied, her arms crossed. "I'm afraid that Her Divine Eminence is..."