Author's Note: This story is a little rougher than usual. I apologize. It was one of the last stories I wrote, and I was going to make it cleaner before I decided to drop the series. So I'm posting what I have.

In terms of my independent story, I've been wrestling with an idea, and I think I'm going to go with it. It means the backstory is very different for a number of my characters, so the characters in my independent fiction won't be the same as my fanfics. But it's true to the genre I've created in my fanfics, and it maintains the blended universe I've created of sci-fi mixed with the fantastical.

I'm a bit sick, right now. So I'm gonna sign off and go to sleep early.

Enjoy!

Jenny zoomed through the streets of the city.

Dodging people, right and left, as she raced the car down the streets at break-neck speed.

"But… what is the Zillwell Machine," Peters asked, "if it's not what we think it is?"

Jenny screeched the car around a tight corner.

"Thing is — the Poilarin invasion always begins with a scout," said Jenny, ignoring his question and embarking on a subject of her own. "Sent ahead to a world, usually through a refugee fleeing a planet the Poilarin previously invaded. The refugee dies upon arriving on the new planet, and the scout moves into another mind. Whomever it can find that can help it achieve its goals."

"Goals," Peters repeated.

Jenny slammed on the breaks, seconds before hitting someone. Waited until they passed. Then floored the accelerator, zipping down the street. "Getting its mates to the new planet, of course!" she said. "Usually by opening up some sort of wormhole between the two worlds and then beginning the cycle all over again."

"Wormhole!" cried Peters. "The Spacio-Temporal Engineering department was on this planet! They liked to make wormholes!"

Jenny gave a small laugh. "Yeah, and if they'd constructed this device, your world would be dust by now. And we'd be quarantining this entire galactic sector."

She swerved around a corner, the car nearly tipping, but managing to hold itself upright.

Peters frowned. "Then who…?"

"Oh, think, Peters! You said it, yourself, earlier!" Jenny shouted. Then, hurriedly, "No, actually, don't think — you'll live longer."

Jenny honked her horn, just barely avoiding hitting another pedestrian.

"Listen, instead," Jenny said. "The Poilarin scout's not hard to find, if you know what to look for. Intellectual type — usually a brilliant scientist. Or a gifted student. All of a sudden, she — or, in this case, he — undergoes a change. Skipping the research he'd been pursuing during his studies, previously, and instead devoting all time and effort to something completely different — sometimes, completely outside his field."

"And then trying to finish the required university work by plagiarizing and faking experimental results," Peters said. "It's the plagiarist, isn't it? His mind was infected by a Poilarin scout."

"Yes." Jenny screeched to a halt outside the police station. Then turned to Peters. "Which should be impossible. Because the Poilarin died out several thousand years ago. Like I said."

Peters didn't understand. "Then how…?"

"A time traveler intervened," said Jenny. "That's why this should never have happened. A time traveler must have brought the Poilarin here, and probably died the moment he or she arrived. The Poilarin scout latched itself onto Aldor Caveer — and that's why Caveer built the Zillwell Machine. As a wormhole."

"The Zillwell Machine?!" Peters cried. Shook his head. "No. Impossible. It's not a wormhole, it's a temporal…"

"Nope, nothing temporal — the Zillwell Machine's just a wormhole," Jenny cut in. "Connecting Irkoli to here." She turned off the ignition. "That's why the MIT Spacio-Temporal Engineering department figured out the danger before the wormhole could fully form. They brought it to the MIT labs — to stop it."

Peters nodded, slowly.

"They must have teamed up with Material Sciences to create a shield that could plug the wormhole and stop the invasion," Jenny said. "But a few Poilarin had already come through. Those Poilarin killed everyone at MIT, and started infecting the rest of the population. Destroyed your world, collapsed your society… you know the rest."

"But that Zillwell Machine can predict the future," said Peters.

"A side-effect of the Poilarin's excretions, maybe?" Jenny guessed. "Or maybe even the Poilarin in your heads, manipulating you into doing what they say so it looks like they can predict the future? Maybe it's just something to try to convince you open the wormhole completely. I don't know."

Peters grimaced. "You think they're spooking us about our futures and how we'll die to make us smash up the machine?"

"Which means removing the dome on top, first," said Jenny, "and letting the others in." She shrugged. "It's what anyone from Irkoli would have done."

"Oh."

A small smile crept up Jenny's face. "But… of course… Irkoli had never seen Christopher Zillwell's movie."

"A future, once predicted, grows infinitely less likely to happen," Peters recalled from the movie. "The reason we can't arrest people for future crimes, until they've actually done something wrong."

"And the reason you lot haven't removed the dome and let all the rest of the Poilarin into this galaxy," said Jenny. "The Poilarin can drive an entire world to the brink of destruction. But they can't override the impact one brilliantly made movie has on humanity."

Peters shrugged, again.

Not sure what to say to this.

Jenny's smile fell, and she opened the door. "Problem is… I think someone did want to remove the dome to that machine," she said. "Someone fully human, who didn't realize that thinking could kill him. And wouldn't have had the mental shields to stop the Poilarin from taking him over and using him as a puppet."

She left the car. Peters following her out.

"And that," Jenny concluded, holding the door to the station open for Peters, "is why Seo shot him."

Hopper couldn't quite believe her eyes, when she saw Peters again — so much older in such a short time! And carrying around a dome that looked almost identical to the one around the Zillwell Machine.

But Hopper could believe it even less, when she heard the story that Jenny had told Peters.

"An alien invasion from another galaxy?!" Hopper cried, bursting into the lab — where Jenny was analyzing the bullets from the crime scene. "You've gotta be kidding!"

"I've encountered the Poilarin before," said Jenny, with a shrug. Her eyes never straying from the bullets she was analyzing. "The warning signs are all the same."

"Brainwave eating aliens that excrete time distortion," Hopper said, repeating what Peters had told her. "And built the Zillwell machine as some kind of wormhole. Except before the Poilarin could get out, you say that MIT sealed the wormhole and stopped the invasion." Hopper hmphed, glaring at Jenny. "It's a lie. MIT destroyed our world."

"No, they saved it," said Jenny. "You've been made to believe MIT are the bad guys, because the Poilarin are inside your heads, manipulating your thoughts — at least to a certain extent. And the Poilarin didn't want you nosing around MIT, figuring out the truth."

"I thought you said all the Poilarin got trapped when that white dome plugged up the wormhole," Hopper pointed out.

"Most of them are!" Jenny replied. "But a few Poilarin escaped into this world before the MIT scientists could plug the wormhole." She turned to a microscope, analyzing something in detail. Then punched a button on its side, and data spurted out onto a screen-sheet beside her. "Trust me, if the Poilarin had arrived on this planet in full force — everything here would be dust, and you lot would all be long dead."

Hopper fumed. "So that's your explanation? Aliens?!" She shook her head. "It's ridiculous."

"No," said Jenny. "It makes perfect sense. I told you Seo wouldn't have shot Jack without a good reason. This is the reason."

Hopper turned on Peters. "She can't be serious!"

"She seems to know what she's talking about," Peters replied. Gestured at Jenny. "And… she's right. It all fits."

"Of course it does," Jenny said. "I know for a fact that this is the Poilarin."

Then Jenny sighed.

And scooted her chair back, dropping the readouts into her lap. "But it looks like Seo didn't."

Hopper crossed her arms. "I thought you said she shot Harkness to stop them."

"Well, yes — to stop an invasion, of course," Jenny said. "But she clearly hasn't run into the Poilarin, before. She didn't know what they were." She showed Hopper the test results. "That's the composition of all the bullets Seo fired from Jack's gun. See? Not what you'd expect from a 21st century revolver."

Jenny pointed at a section of the readout, as if to illustrate her point.

And Hopper skimmed her eyes across it, shaking her head in annoyance. "What, exactly, am I looking at, here?"

"A special kind of pure-iron bullet," said Jenny. "The outer coating burns away when the projectile's fired, leaving an injection of pure iron inside the body. I've heard through the grapevine that it's a very effective method of destroying vampires, developed in late 2004, shortly before the vampires vanished from the Earth."

Hopper tried to stop her jaw dropping open in incredulity. How was anyone swallowing this?! "Vampires?!"

"That must be what she thought it was," Jenny replied. "A vampire who'd gotten stuck inside the machine, and was feeding off the rest of the planet. The Poilarin inside of Jack's mind would have encouraged this line of thinking, so she could help him break into the room with the Zillwell Machine."

"We've got an audio track of what happened when they broke in," Peters offered. "Or… snippets."

Jenny spun on him.

Staring.

"And you didn't think to mention this when I first turned up?!" Jenny cried.

Peters and Hopper exchanged looks. And shrugged.

"No, of course — think too hard, and the Poilarin will kill you even faster," Jenny muttered. She ran a hand over her face, trying to quell her frustration.

Then, in an only slightly edgy voice, "Peters. May I please hear the audio you have of Seo and Jack inside that chamber with the Zillwell machine?"

"…must have been brought through by one of those piano drops," Seo's voice said, on the recording. "Through a wormhole…"

A flicker on the recording.

Then Seo's voice again: "…a number of Great Big Ones who'd fled this dimension back during the Dark Times. Mom told me that…"

Seo stopped. Suddenly choked up.

Then, much quieter, added, "Let's just focus on getting rid of it. One drop, and…"

Jenny bit her lower lip, hearing it all play out. She could guess what had happened in Seo's life, between the last time she'd seen Seo, and now. Why Seo was so upset about her mom…

But there was no point in dwelling on that.

Not when the fate of the Milky Way depended on Jenny understanding what had happened, in that room with the Zillwell Machine, when Jack and Seo had been inside.

The audio flickered, again.

And burst back into life with the sound of a fight and a scuffle. Jack grunted under the force of a smack — sounded like a collision with one of the walls.

"What are you doing?!" Seo's voice demanded. "I said wait! I missed something, Jack! It's not a—"

Another flicker of the audio.

Followed by Jack's voice: "…only way!"

The sound of footsteps towards the machine. Followed by Seo, suddenly horrified, breathing, "Oh, no. You're not really…"

The sound of the machine suddenly humming.

"Get away from that!" Seo cried.

Followed by the sounds of another fight, both of them yelping and whacking and grunting under the impact of blows and strikes and lunges.

"What did you do?" Seo said, past the sounds of the fight. "What's that machine — your way of properly feeding on this population?!"

Jenny sighed.

Seo obviously hadn't studied the equations carefully enough. As usual, she'd skipped past the boring researchy, mathematical bits and had gotten right down to wiring up the computer and tracking down the student who'd begun this whole thing.

Another series of loud crashes, followed by a cry of pain from Seo, and a bang that resulted in another grunt from Jack.

"Oh, no; I'm not letting you near that thing, again!" Seo said. The sound of a gun cocking. "I don't know how or when you got into Jack's head, but he gave me this, way back when this whole thing started. Maybe he could feel you inside his head, and wanted me protected. I don't know."

The fight sounds stopped, all at once.

"Seo," Jack's voice said, on edge.

"It won't kill Jack," Seo warned. "But it'll kill you."

A shot.

Then the sound of footsteps running. And Jack's voice calling back, "Please, Seo! Don't do this!"

Then the audio cut out.

Peters stood back a little, absorbing this. "You know," he said, "we should have listened to that sooner. It could have told us a lot about what was going on."

Jenny decided it'd be best for all parties involved if she didn't grab him up by the shoulders and shake him, screaming, 'of course it would have!'

She had bigger things on her mind.

"She didn't undo whatever Jack had done to the machine," Jenny muttered. Turning on her heels and racing towards the chamber with the Zillwell Machine. "Seo thought there was only one creature! She thought the machine was a way to help it feed or something — and that getting rid of that one creature would be enough to stop all this! That's why she chased after Jack!"

"But… she shot Jack with the vampire-killing bullet," Peters pointed out, racing after Jenny. "Why is he still alive, if she…?"

"The Poilarin aren't vampires!" Jenny shouted. "And there are a lot more than one!"

Peters had begun wheezing, struggling to keep up.

Getting older and older by the minute, and growing stupider and stupider at the same time.

Jenny knew she shouldn't yell at him — it wasn't his fault.

"Seo chased Jack down and cornered him," said Jenny, slowing as she punched in the code she'd seen Peters use, earlier, and entered the room with the glass panel. "He's a fixed point in time — so she figured if she killed him with the pure iron bullets, the creature would die but Jack would spring back to life."

She tugged a bent paperclip out of her pocket, and headed over to the far door that led to the Zillwell Machine. Knelt down to pick the lock.

"But Gavin got in the way," said Jenny. "Just for long enough that another Poilarin could track down Seo and creep into her mind. She's part-human — so she's more susceptible than me. She must have dropped into a coma to get her brain activity down to almost nothing, and stop the Poilarin from eating her."

Hopper rushed over, tried to pull Jenny away from the door. "What are you doing? It's not safe in there!"

Peters stopped nearby, wheezing and struggling to catch his breath. "We told you! The MIT scientists who studied the Zillwell Machine—"

"Died, I remember!" Jenny said. Scowled, frustrated at having to spell everything out for these people. "But that's because they were intellectuals, they were humans, and they were thinking! The Poilarin ate them — then excreted enough time distortion to turn them to dust."

Hopper and Peters looked at one another.

"All right — let her in," Peters decided. "After all..." He looked to his right, catching his reflection in a pane of glass — so old and withered, now. "...this is how it happens."

Hoppers eased her grip on Jenny.

To stare at Peters, with growing concern.

"It's not dangerous for any of us to enter that chamber," said Jenny, managing to extract herself from their grips, and returning to picking the lock. "You two aren't going to understand that machine if you tried — and the Poilarin are going to have a bit more trouble getting into my mind than any mere human's!"

The lock clicked.

And the door swung open, Jenny racing inside.

"Stay here," Hopper instructed Peters, trying to stop him from following Jenny in.

Peters just pushed past her. Determined.

"Cop's gotta do what a cop's gotta do," he said, his voice now old and feeble, like the rest of him. "I've seen this all before, Hopper. I knew it was coming."

"You don't have to—!"

"Can't fight fate," said Peters, glancing over at Hopper. "You know that."