On Day Seven, Birmingham lost three districts. The phrase used in official reports was spatial ecology incursion. Everyone else called it a breach. At 04:12, a fracture opened across an industrial area south-east of the city centre. At 04:18, vegetation emerged.
At 04:31, the first buildings disappeared beneath it. By dawn, thirty hectares of English city had become something else. Trees with red bark grew through warehouses. Black vines climbed concrete walls. The air inside the affected area registered mana saturation six times the national average.
Creatures appeared.
Not all hostile.
Enough were.
The government established a perimeter. Then discovered the perimeter was valuable. Crystals formed inside the zone. Plant samples exhibited impossible chemical structures. Dead creatures contained organs capable of storing mana. One insect-like organism produced a filament stronger than comparable industrial fibres. Within six hours, three ministries were arguing over jurisdiction.
Within eight, corporations were offering extraction contracts. Within ten, local criminals were sneaking through the perimeter. Within twelve, an alien company offered to purchase the entire zone. Elias arrived at hour thirteen. Harcourt met him beside an armoured vehicle.
"You're not going in."
"Then why did you invite me?"
"To advise."
"I can advise from inside."
"You are fifty-eight."
"Thank you for remembering."
"You are not a frontline soldier."
"I was one."
"Thirty years ago."
"Twenty-nine."
"That correction makes it worse."
Elias adjusted the straps on his vest. Priya stood nearby wearing armour that looked too large for her and an expression suggesting several life choices had gone wrong.
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"I'm with Anna," she said.
"You're coming too."
"I know. That's why I'm with Anna."
The research team consisted of eight people, escorted by twenty soldiers and two awakened specialists. One, Sergeant Malik Reeves, had accepted a Defender Path and could create a translucent shield approximately two metres wide. The second was a young woman called Hana Volkov who could sense active mana sources through walls. Elias had spent twenty minutes interviewing both before agreeing to travel with them. Hana found the experience more unpleasant than the monsters.
They entered through a gap cut in the black vines. The world changed immediately. Temperature increased four degrees.
Sound dampened.
The sky remained visible but seemed slightly too far away. Elias stopped after ten metres.
"Pressure shift."
Priya checked.
"Tiny."
"Consistent?"
"Yes."
Myrddin operated through a hardened portable unit attached to Elias's pack.
"Local geometry deviates from external GPS references."
Everyone stopped.
Harcourt stared.
"In English."
Elias looked at the buildings ahead.
"It may be bigger inside than outside."
Priya sighed.
"Of course it is."
They advanced.
The first monster attacked from a roof. Reeves's barrier caught it mid-leap. The creature resembled an elongated ape covered in translucent scales. It struck the shield and rebounded.
Gunfire killed it.
Elias was beside the corpse before the soldiers finished checking rooftops.
"Blood is clear."
"Doctor," Harcourt warned.
"No lungs visible."
"Doctor."
"One moment."
The dead creature's chest opened.
Not from a wound.
From inside.
A smaller organism erupted outward.
Elias jumped back.
Harcourt shot it six times.
Silence.
Elias looked at her.
She looked at him.
"Next time," she said, "I shoot the corpse before you touch it."
"Reasonable."
They reached the first crystal growth forty minutes later. Blue translucent structures protruded through asphalt.
Hana raised a hand.
"Strong."
Elias crouched beside one. His manual interface remained almost blank. Yet he could feel the crystal. A faint pressure behind his eyes.
He touched it.
The world sharpened.
Mana rushed into him.
His muscles locked.
Information flickered across his vision despite manual mode.
UNREFINED ARCANE RESERVOIR.
COMPATIBLE.
ABSORPTION AVAILABLE.
Elias withdrew his hand.
"Don't touch them."
Priya stared.
"You just did."
"Which is how I learned not to."
Then gunfire erupted ahead.
Not military gunfire.
Automatic. Undisciplined.
Human voices shouted.
Harcourt swore.
"Looters."
They moved forward.
The street beyond had become a battlefield. Six armed men in mismatched equipment were firing at British soldiers from behind an overturned van. One of them glowed bright red. Another wore alien-looking armour.
Elias stared at it.
"Where did they get that?"
Myrddin answered before Harcourt could.
"Concordance contract signature detected."
Elias's expression hardened. The aliens had been on Earth seven days. They had already found someone willing to sell guns to the natives.