SEVERAL HOURS LATER

Italica, the Special Region

Ayaka woke several hours later in a hotel room in Italica, unaware that anything was out of the ordinary. They had traveled many hours to cross the distance between Sadera and Italica in one night, and despite the fact that it was in a 4-wheel drive truck, she felt like she had covered the whole distance herself on foot. After dropping her off at a hotel, Lelei had left without so much as a single word.

Therefore, she was surprised to find not Lelei in the hotel lobby, but Tomita. On seeing her, the Warrant Officer put away his cell phone and walked over to greet her. "Hi," he said. "There has been an incident."

"Eh?" Ayaka looked around and asked. 'Where's Lelei-sensei?"

"She's attending an urgent meeting. What I have to say is not good news, and you might want to take this sitting down."

Not good news? Ayaka's mind raced as she tried to determine what Tomita was talking about. It could mean all kinds of things. Had the foreign Ministry decided to take her back to Tokyo? Had something happened to Lelei? Had she said or done something wrong in Sadera?

Had something gone wrong at home?

"Yesterday night," Tomita said, "Japan was attacked."

Ayaka could feel her gut sink. Surely that meant China or North Korea or Russia. Did Tokyo still exist? Did the Gate to Tokyo still exist?

Slowly, Tomita gave her the details. It had only been Osaka, but the attack had spread across Osaka Bay as far as Amagasaki before it had been stopped. Lots of people had died, the country was in a state of shock, and nobody knew if another attack was coming or not. Even scarier, the attack in Kansai was one of several dozen, spread all across the globe. None of the more prominent nations were spared.

But Tomita did not talk about what Ayaka wanted to hear the most. "How is everyone taking it?"

Tomita shrugged. "Remarkably well, actually. Lots of thoughts and prayers from everyone to everyone else. I saw many conversations on online forums, people telling each other how to survive until emergency services arrived, what to do if the power was still out in their area, and so on. Japan and many other nations are deep in discussion in an attempt to solve the problem, and many of the world's militaries are cooperating through existing channels. For now, Japan is treating it as an alien invasion and not blaming anyone, but we are seeking a reason for how this could have happened. Lelei is meeting with Prime Minister Kouhara and Defense Minister Nomura, which is why she wasn't here to meet you this morning."

Ayaka nodded as she struggled to sort through her feelings. On the one hand, many people had died. On the other hand, she was thrilled. The thing she had seen so many years ago, when the Gate opened in Ginza, had returned. The petty bullshit was gone.

But that moment of elation was struck down by the memory of a 900-year old girl who sweetly declared, "You want something real? Pain of death is very real. It's the realest thing there is!"

That couldn't be right; she had no desire to kill people—most normal people didn't—and yet apparently death and destruction were needed to get people to treat each other as humans.

Rory's words made no more sense than they did the day before.

"Your parents are doing alright, by the way. Neither of them were in Kansai, and both wanted you to know that your extended family is also in good health. We told them that you are doing fine on your behalf…" he sat back in his seat. "Odd."

"What?"

"I was expecting that to be your first question. Aren't you worried about anyone back at home?"

Ayaka folded her arms. "I…I don't know how to feel. It's nice to hear that they weren't hurt, but… what if nothing changes?"

"What do you mean?"

"What if… what if it's like Ginza all over again, and everyone forgets by next week?"

Tomita shook his head. "This is the worst thing to happen in a long time. I don't think anyone will be forgetting this for a while."

Washington D.C., United States

By the morning, things had not gotten any better.

Air Force One had ultimately landed at Andrews Air Force Base to the largest military enterouge Clayton had seen outside of peacetime. He and a number of others had been ushered all the way to the White House, where he had waited anxiously for the past few hours to get his results back from NOAA.

Meanwhile, he had kept an eye on the news. Estimates from various stations listed American civilian deaths as anything between a hundred thousand and a quarter million. The only comparable disaster was the Spanish Flu pandemic a century before, and all of these deaths had happened in a single day.

And that was just the United States. The cities in China and India that had suffered Gate attacks had denser populations, and some countries with smaller air forces were fighting all night long to contain the monsters until ground forces could show up. Monsters from a Gate in Nairobi had still not been entirely eradicated, and was only that morning being dispatched by a multinational force operating out of bases in Djibouti. In all, the global death toll would probably be between two and three million…and that did not account for untold thousands who would likely succumb to injuries as they waited on overwhelmed medical personnel.

The only pattern in the attacks, as had been noted the day before, was that targets seemed to be major population centers, rather than infrastructure or military installations. Death seemed to be the only objective.

When Clayton was finally admitted to the Oval Office, the couches were crowded with members of the Department of Defense, all trying to relay information and coordinate responses to the best of their ability. Defense Secretary Barton, upon seeing Clayton at the door, closed up his laptop, walked over, and said, "I know it's an old cliché, but I was just a few months from retirement. Just my luck, eh?"

"What can I say? If emergencies happened at convenient times, they wouldn't be emergencies, would they?" Clayton said, causing the Secretary of Defense to grin and shake his head.

At the room's main desk, Mahana was shouting into his phone. "Nearly a quarter million Americans died yesterday, and you're wasting my time with this bullshit!? How fucking dare you! You tell the Senate Minority leader to take her head out of her ass and focus on the fact that some of those were her constituents too!" He slammed the phone back onto its cradle and, looking up at Clayton, said, "Please tell me you have something."

Clayton placed the report on the table. "Before I returned from Japan, I met with a NASA engineer named Carol Dawson regarding an inquiry made by the Japanese government. Apparently, there was a concern that SR-Phizons were leaking into our world from the Special Region. I didn't think about it much at first, since if it's only affecting Japan, it's not of much interest to us. Before she left, Dawson recommended asking NOAA about it, which made me think that there might be more to the story."

He opened to a page in the report. This showed a map of the Earth centered on the Pacific Ocean, with arrows pointing in a generally Easterly direction, starting from above Japan and circling over North America, Europe, and most of Asia before making it back to the far East. Other arrows showed intermixing, resulting in smaller arrows heading in other directions. "What is all of this?" the President asked.

"This is a global map of upper-level wind patterns, and was designed to model the spread of nuclear fallout from the Fukushima disaster back in 2011." He traced a finger from Japan, towards Hawaii, then North America, Europe, and across Asia. "Think of the Gate as a busted nuclear reactor. It has been periodically leaking SR-Phizons into Earth's atmosphere over the past ten years or so. That's more than enough time for SR-Phizons to be distributed across the globe.

"There are only two kinds of ways to make a Gate, either be a God, or be someone that received instructions from a God. As far as we know, there are only four countries that have people who might have been informed of Gate creation after direct contact with Gods or their Apostles. These include the Falmart Republic, the Japanese, ourselves, and Vietnam."

Mahana raised an eyebrow. "Vietnam?"

"One of their citizens, Dr. Thi Van Nguyen, had direct contact with the SR God Palapon, which you may recall prompted a meeting between the three of us, Minister Nomura, and General Kengun two years ago," Barton explained. "He may or may not have been told about the methods involved during that time. He dropped off the grid soon after returning to Vietnam."

"Do you think the Chinese picked him up?"

"Doubtful. If they had gotten anything useful out of him, then we would have seen the PLA acquiring a number of key materials and tools, much like how a sudden interest in centrifuges and yellowcake warns us that a country is developing atomic weapons."

The President was shrewd enough to catch Barton's inference, so he just nodded and said, "Okay, so going back to this weather thing?"

"I have two theories," Clayton said. "The only magical beings that could open that many Gates would need to be a Special Region God. This means that either a God leaked through to our world from the Special Region, or one formed here on Earth."

Mahana frowned. "We're fighting God?"

"A God, not the God," Clayton emphasized. "It's a sentient creature that can be reasoned with and, if need be, injured."

Mahana looked over his shoulder at the grounds beyond the West Wing. "Anyone reasonable would not have attacked all the conventionally powerful countries on the planet at the same time. I need to know who we're dealing with, and if they are one of these God-things, how to kill it."

Clayton cringed at the last two words. "About that…I said we could injure one. Killing a God poses… problems…"

"Why?"

"The most effective deterrent against the Gods in the Special Region is nuclear radiation," Clayton said.

"Okay, so we nuke the fucker."

"Gods are spread out over a planetary Phizon cloud. In the Special Region, we flush all the air from aircraft cabins with bottled stuff from Earth if we don't want to be overheard," Barton explained. "If you wanted to eliminate a God, you would need to irradiate everywhere the Phizon cloud occupied."

Mahana looked to Clayton for the simple version, so the Ambassador replied, "You would need to nuke the entire planet."

"I read in a brief that the Falmart god—Pal-whatever—was killed."

"The other Gods killed him," Clayton said. "They have pinpoint control that we don't have."

"There's got to be an alternative," Mahana said. "I am not going to solve this by blowing up the Earth."

"We can contact the Department of Energy and Fermilab," Barton said, but even as he said it, he didn't seem convinced of his own words. The D.O.E. had no way of identifying who the supposed god was, nor would they have a novel way of defeating it on short notice. If the unknown entity didn't attack before that point, China just might.

"Not good enough," Clayton said.

"Well then," Mahana said, "Do you know anyone who can defuse a nuclear disaster?"

The Ambassador's face lit up with a big grin. "Actually, Mr. President…"

Tsubasa Space Center, Japan

"Damn, damn, DAMN IT ALL!" Youmai shouted as he kicked the lab bench. "We were so close, SO CLOSE to getting the Phizon detector flying, and now? It will be like the Apollo program all over again, with Space cancelled over someone's stupid war."

"We do not know that this was an intentional attack," Kuragin pointed out. "It could be a natural phenomenon."

The four of them had gathered in one of the space center planning rooms. On one side of the room, Youmei paced back and forth like a captured tiger. Nearby, Kuragin was following the news on a laptop, cool and stoic, twirling a stylus between two fingers. At the other end of the table, Carol was making notes on a notepad as Greta stood in a nearby corner, looking out the window onto the Space Center campus which was just now being lit by an early dawn. All four were in various disheveled states, having rushed from their homes or apartments to arrive as quickly as possible. After an uncomfortable night of sleeping at desks or on benches, none of them were feeling that great, and even the cup of coffee Carol was nursing didn't make the world seem much brighter. Death tolls were pouring in from around the world and the number was still climbing.

"What I don't understand is how no one anticipated this," Carol said, looking at her notes. "There must have been signs. Someone in Japan or America must have studied Gates as a science."

"There's no anticipating the Gods," Greta muttered. "They do what they want, whenever they want, with no regard for the people they squash underneath."

"You really think it's a God?"

Slowly, Greta nodded. "When people… when I've seen Lelei make a Gate, it was done with care and deliberation, and there was only one of them. To make so many Gates and cause so much destruction...living people don't do things like that, not unless they are cruel or insane. Some Gods like La and Lunayur are able to approach the world peacefully, but cruelness and insanity is far, far, far more common."

The stylus fell out of Kuragin's hand. "What if…" he said, then began typing hurriedly on his computer, before shouting, "Hah, I knew it!"

The other three looked at him for and explanation, so he flipped his laptop around and presented them with an image of the world filled with arrows. "Trade winds!" he declared. "Don't you remember, that woman from the army, what was her name…?"

Carol blanked for a few seconds, then the answer popped into her head. "Takagi? Oh!" she stood and said. "This is about SR Phizons!"

"Precisely!" Kuragin said, his face firm and resolute. "Phizons carried around the world on the Westerlies and Trade Winds. Ms. Takagi was very interested in the particles accumulating here. You say that these Gods are magic beings? Well, now we clearly have enough Phizons to support one here. Perhaps the Japanese government knew in advance!"

"Impossible!" Youmei said. "If they knew, they would have placed the army in Osaka to greet the threat."

"But they did know something," Carol said. "Professor Youmei, do you have any contacts with the JSDF that might be able to give us an answer?"

"There is a certain forcibly-retired General who was my kouhai in college. He might know someone." Youmei pulled out his cellphone and began a hurried, if hushed conversation with a person on the other end. "Interesting," he said after hanging up. "Kochiro says that there was an ongoing investigation into the Fist of Twelve terrorist group, and that there was a great deal of aggravation over coordinating with law enforcement in Vietnam."

Remarkably, it was neither Dawson nor Kuragin that reacted first, but Greta. "Vietnam!" she said. "You mean, the place Dr. Nguyen is from!?"

"Who?" Kuragin asked.

"Itami and General Kengun seemed really worried about him during the war with Rondel," Greta explained. "He leaked technology secrets to them during the rebellion, and it caused all kinds of trouble during the air battle. Flat said that he was trying to make a contract with Palapon, the God of—" her jaw dropped open and she dropped into a nearby chair. "Oh no. Oh no no no no no."

"Palapon?" Carol said, trying to recall. "That's… let's see… that's the god of revenge—oh."

Greta nodded profusely. "God of Revenge, no known Apostle. If Palapon wanted revenge against Earth for killing him, what better way to do it than secretly make Dr. Nguyen an Apostle?"

"Can Apostles open Gates?" Youmei asked.

"No, but Gods can," Greta said. "After a thousand years, an Apostle can be elevated into Godhood… but that's a natural process. Dr. Nguyen was a medical doctor. What if he found a drug or medicine or procedure to speed up the process?"

None of the other scientists said a word. This had to be the answer. Carol felt stupid for not seeing it earlier. All the signs were there, including Nguyen. Greta had mentioned him in passing, but she hadn't thought much of it. Now that hundreds of thousands were dead and dying, she cursed herself for not realizing the possibility sooner. "We have to tell someone," she said. "I don't care whose government we call first, but someone needs to know."

She reached for the phone handset in the middle of the desk and was just about to press a button when there was a knock at the door. Slowly she stood and made her way over to the small window that looked out into the hall.

A United States Marine stared back at her.

She quickly opened the door to admit the man, who looked at her and said, "Are you Dr. Carol Dawon from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration? If yes, can you show me your ID?"

Carol pulled out her passport and presented it to the marine. He nodded, satisfied, then reached back into the hallway go grab a large case, which he began to unfold into a wide-screen display. "Sorry for the delay, ma'am," he said. "Secure teleconference over quantum is a bit of a pain."

"Secure teleconference? Who's calling me?"

The screens snapped on, and she found herself staring at two men; one standing in front of a desk, the other sitting behind it. "I'm Eric Barton, the United States Secretary of Defense," the standing man said. "I believe you recognize the person sitting behind me."

In the back, President Mahana have a halfhearted fraction of a smile and waved.

Next to her, Greta waited patiently for an explanation. She was the one person in the room who wasn't fluent in English, and in this instance, Carol believed that this was for the best. If Greta knew that they were talking to one of the most senior members of the United States military, she surely would have run away screaming. "You probably don't remember me," Barton said. 'We met at a DARPA lecture—"

"I should let you know," Carol said. "I am not the only person here, and if this is about the Gates, if you want to talk to me, you are going to have to talk with my whole team." She waved the others forward and introduced them one by one. On introducing Kuragin, she saw Barton's face noticeably dip, but Carol didn't care. If the Secretary of Defense was willing to worry about petty nationalism in a time like this, then he wasn't worth talking to.

Before Barton could even get a word in, Carol explained their conclusions with additional comments by Greta, Kuragin, and Youmei. Over the course of the conversation, Mahana's face gradually morphed into a smile. "We should've called you people first," he said. "It would have saved us a lot of time and trouble."

"It is just a guess," Kuragin pointed out. "I imagine that you're in a better position to independently verify the story about Nguyen with Vietnam."

Barton pointed to someone offscreen, and they heard the footfalls of an aide running out of the Oval Office. 'We're working on it," he said. "Here's what we've got."

He went on to describe the situation with Phizons and radiation. "We normally would not mention this in front of foreign nationals," he pointed out. "But these are trying times. I think you'll agree that dropping atom bombs everywhere is probably not the best way to solve the problem. You're some of our best experts in the field. Is there any other way you know of that might work against a God?"

The four looked at each other. Greta slowly shook her head, Youmei shrugged, and Carol was about to apologize on everyone's behalf when she noticed the slowly growing smile on Kuragin's face. Oh no, she thought. This was the same kind of intensity he had when debating his Phizons-on-the-moon argument with Youmei, and it worried her. "Mr. President," he said. "All we must do is wait for a solar flare of significant magnitude to strike the Earth, and the problem will solve itself."

"And are you able to create solar flares on demand, Mr. Kuragin?" Barton said.

"I am sorry, that was meant to be a joke."

"Is it something that magicians could summon?" Greta said.

The other three looked at her in shock. "Greta," Carol said. "It's a jet of fire from the sun. They would be manipulating entire sun. It's millions of times the mass of Earth. Even if you got together every magician in the Special Region and linked them all with Focus Crystals, I think that's a bit beyond what they'd be able to control."

"They can control the weather though," Greta argued. "They can move whole storm fronts, if they want to. Maybe we could redirect one of these solar flares—"

"It was a joke," Kuragin repeated. "If Earth was struck by a solar flare of the wrong magnitude, the atmosphere would boil off and everyone would die. We need something lighter and more local."

And with freakish synchronicity, Kuragin's eyebrows shot up, just as the other two scientists jumped out of their chairs. "Such a thing exists," he said, followed by three very simple words. These words would have been meaningless to anyone without an astronomy education, but it caused Carol to burst out laughing.

"I don't understand," Greta said, so Carol immediately filled her in. Over the next few minutes they completely forgot that the President of the United States was waiting on the other end of the line as they ironed out the details. Finally, as one, they turned back to the screen and presented their plan. Mahana and Barton looked at them with amusement at first, followed by confusion, and finally incredulity. Eventually, Barton shook his head and said, "No way. Something like that has never been done before, not on this scale, and that's even before you take magic into account."

"You're also assuming that other nations will agree to this," Mahana pointed out. "And even if they did, the logistics, the manpower, the cost—"

"Let me explain it to them," Kuragin said. "If they will not believe Americans, they will believe me."

"And the cost would be far, far lower than dropping nuclear bombs everywhere," Carol pointed out. "With our plan, everyone stands a good chance of surviving."

"But the radiation—"

"No worse than a few chest X-rays," Youmei said. "And if people are truly concerned, they can go into their basements for even less of an effect."

An aide, presumably the one from before, appeared onscreen and whispered a few comments into Barton's ear, who nodded and said, "We've received word from the Vietnamese and Japanese embassies that there was a raid on Dr. Nguyen's research center, and have evidence that suggests that your theory about what happened to him could be correct."

Behind him, the President nodded and said, "Well that's a relief. Maybe if the Chinese won't listen to me, they'll listen to Vietnam."

"China?" Carol asked. "Did we miss something?"

Mahana laughed. "Yes. Yes, we very narrowly missed something, and I couldn't be happier. I'll make sure that your theory gets passed around, and then I'll schedule an in-person meeting with the group you mentioned for the sake of building good faith. We could use more cooperation in these trying times. You said we needed at least eight, right?"

Carol translated the question to Greta, who nodded. "Eight is good, but the more points we have, the better our chances of success."

"If you say so. If we can get the other countries to approve, we'll forward the meeting location to you in the next few hours. In the meantime, I'm going to update the House and Senate Defense Comittees." Barton looked up at someone offscreen and added, "You're right, they really do know what they're doing," then cut the connection.

As Youmei, Kuragin, and Greta celebrated, Carol couldn't help but be distracted by the last line. Who had Barton been talking to? Who recommended them?

The first answer she came up with was not one she liked.