After I turned my laptop on, I stepped back from it, leaning against a wall, so I could watch alongside my students. I was between the wall and the desk the vamps share. Call me biased, and yes, I am, but, out of all the classes I teach, I relate the most to them. Partly because we don't have strigoi students-and I don't think I could bear the thought of a child ending up like me-partly because we have few undead students, in general.

Ghouls appear due to a variety of causes, but young people rarely become ghouls, and most of them are more interested in flesh than education. The proliferation of lab-grown meat has reduced their cannibalistic tendencies, but not the stigma against them. Ghosts are rarely coherent enough to participate in society. So, vampires.

Eric and Bogdan weren't brothers, but they might as well have been. Vampires remain the age they are turned at until they are destroyed, so being turned in your teens might not sound so bad, at first. But then, you think about it. You realise that your mind and body, while far more powerful and efficient, are never going to truly mature. That can be sobering, which is why most 'young' vamps have mental issues. They're also the most likely to form groups, if only so they have a shoulder to lean on.

Their souls are gone, too. At least I've still got mine, though it's bound tighter to my corpse than any human's to their body, and so twisted most soul-eaters would rather starve than try to consume it.

Eric and Bogdan have been friends since the fifties. After the Soviets stamped down on the supernatural threats in Eastern Europe, they established military bases in neighbouring countries, so they could watch over potential threats and put them down before they could escalate. And if that resulted in increased scrutiny in civilian life, well, no one ever said freedom is free.

Romania was never part of the USSR, but our country was still filled with their watchmen. We had used "their" money to rebuild it, after all (the money had first come from the Americans, but they didn't like talking about that)so it was only natural that we would allow them to patrol our lands, just in case something we couldn't deal with appeared.

The two got sick of that. They were both city boys, in a time when the term was synonymous with "rebellious intellectual", with no desire to enter the Party or the Security. So, they sought a way to escape the lives they saw as cages. They went to Castle Bran, where vampires from across the world are drawn by Dracula's legend, and asked to be turned. They were spurned several times-vampires are weary of turning anything other than adult humans, especially since that Australian madman turned a blue whale that drowned Oceania in blood-so they tried something else.

They cut their wrists, and throats, and laid down on the ground to bleed out. They knew a vamp would pass through, and, even if they didn't turn them, and were merely tempted by the blood, they'd still die. Win-win, in their perspective.

A vampire did pass through, eventually, and, after a moment of exasperation once it realised what they were trying to do, turned them to prevent them from bleeding out.

Then, once they healed, she beat them to a pulp while screaming their ears off. What did they think the Communists would do if they learned people were turning to undeath to escape them?

They were sent to the Canal-the Danube-Black Sea Canal, to be precise, but everyone called it the Canal-where superhuman, tireless workers were always sought and appreciated. In the eighties, when Eastern Europe began chafing under the Soviets' 'helping hand' they were among the first to jump in with the Revolutionaries.

But they never finished their education. They were fifteen when turned, then spent several decades doing everything short of learning. When the supernatural was accepted, if not embraced, in the nineties, they tried being normal again. Or, well, as normal as they could be.

Mind, I only spent time thinking about all that because it took a few moments for the signal from Mars to reach us.

The screen showed a ridged, volcanic area, with steam raising from glowing pits in the ground. I recognized Olympus Mons in the background.

'Greetings from Mars!' The speaker-announcer? host?- was a cheerful black woman, with a wide, white smile and cornrows visible through her transparent helmet. From the accent, she seemed to be from the southern US. Georgian, maybe.

'We are happy to announce the Mars Colonization Effort has begun. The Restoration Process ended years ago, but we are still watchful for any signs of Red Weed or Black Smoke.' Typical for announcements nowadays. Start on a happy note, then remind everyone that they should still watch for dangers, even if-especially if-there appear to be none. There was no need to scare people, though, which was probably why the speaker was affable.

'Lame,' Eric muttered. 'I wanted to see 'em fight a Tripod.'

'Didn't you have your fill of those when we ran from one?' Bogdan replied.

'Bet I could take one now...'

'Yeah, yeah...'

'Hush,' I whispered. 'They're getting to the good part.'

The boys, both of them almost twice my age, nodded and stopped discussing. Two more figures, both naked, both sexless, appeared on the screen, next to the announcer. One was short and thin, its bulbous grey head barely reaching past her waist. Its big, black eyes didn't blink, because they were lidless. The other figure was so tall the woman didn't even come up to its elbow. Broad and scaled, I knew it was wearing this form to show it had nothing to hide. No reason to give the conspiracy theorists ammo.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

'Our alien allies are just as eager to explore our solar system as we are!' the woman continued. 'We hope their experience in blazing trails across the stars will make this endeavor merely difficult, rather than daunting.'

The reptilian didn't say anything, just nodded at the camera. The grey raised its three-fingered hand, trying to make a peace sign.

'Yes, Terrans.' Its lipless mouth didn't move, but there was no need. Its telepathy crossed the void between worlds at a significant fraction of lightspeed, and I knew everyone who was watching this was hearing the same worlds. 'You sheltered me in a moment of weakness. I would return the favour.'

Grey One's flying saucer had crashed to Earth in 1947, and it was the only crewmember to survive. After the Americans dug it out of Roswell, they quarantined it for several years, to make sure it brough no alien diseases to our world. Grey One went along with it, because it was fascinated by our species and technology. It healed fast enough to be apt for fighting when the Martians came, and destroyed several of their war machines in a manoeuvre that also ruined its ship. Since then, it has remained on Earth, learning all it can until its fellows find it.

The reptilian, I didn't recognize. It didn't introduce itself, either. Maybe it was uncomfortable? Going from the Earth's core to Mars' surface meant some serious temperature shift, and it was a testament to its toughness that it wore no environmental suit.

Speaking of...

'This is a joint effort, made by the world's governments and corporations alike,' the announcer said, as thousands of more people, in suits similar to hers, filled the background in the camera, setting up prefabricated shelters and research stations. Terraforming vehicles, wheeled and flying alike, came after, racing across and over the volcanic landscape, seeds dropping from them like rain.

'Ordinarily, volcanic soil would be perfect from planting. However, the Martian environment means most plants cannot take root here. The potatoes and bamboo in the vehicles you see have been modified in labs, to thrive on the red planet.'

'Bamboo? Did you bring some pandas too?' the werebear, Alin, wondered out loud. His classmates snickered. I smirked.

'We are as safe as our crops-though for different reasons, obviously,' the woman joked. 'As we speak, the atmosphere is being modified across Mars, and forests will be grown to accelerate the process. Our mages assure us that, in a few years, we will be able to walk this world as if it were home. Until then, the suits provided by Yamada Incorporated will have to suffice.'

'Ah, and now a word from our sponsors,' I said. 'See, children? Nothing is free in this world, or out of it, apparently.'

'At least there weren't ads before the transmission, teach,' one of the werewolves said.

'If there were, I bet they'd have been unskippable, too,' One of the iele chimed in.

'The Safesuit is environmentally-sealed, and has its own air supply,' the woman said, gesturing at her torso. I bet the watchers were real interested in her air supply. I certainly was. 'Made from yamadium, it can withstand almost anything the wearer can expect.'

The image shifted to a testing montage. A yamadium string-because old Kenji just can't resist naming things after his family-,thinner than a strand of hair, was stretched between two pillars. I doubted it was visible to normal people, for all that it was clear as day to me. A speeding freight train, dozens of cars, thousands of tons, came at the string, the rails shaking under it.

And was stopped cold. The locomotive bent in half, and the train crumpled into a mess of cars, but the string barely bent.

The image shifted again, the string stopping other things: a cargo plane trying to take off, a cargo ship, a naval artillery shell. It hardly bent, no matter what was thrown at it.

I nodded approvingly, for all the glorified advertisement. I'd seen yamadium in action, because I'd been asked to test my strength against it, and was one of the few beings that could rip through it. Not that they didn't have stronger stuff for use against strigoi or worse. Talk was that, in a few months, Safesuits would be distributed to firemen, cops and soldiers worldwide, which would even the gap between humans and hostile supernaturals.

'Well,' the woman smiled after the montage ended. 'I think we've showed enough, yes? Time to get started.'

'Yes,' the reptilian spoke for the first time, and its voice was raspy, like scales slithering on leather. 'It is.'

And, without any warning, it ripped the woman in half.

On the screen, Grey One stumbled away, shocked. In the classroom, everyone rose to their feet, screaming in outrage or horror.