Another day, another potential human extinction. This is why I need a hearty breakfast.

—Vic Daring, Issue #4

Nobody spoke on the short ride back to the underground base. The helicopters flew low above them, and the sound of roaring engines would have drowned out any attempt at conversation, anyway.

Fisher’s mind was caught in a series of tight loops of calculation. But he couldn’t see any way around the facts.

Earth was done for.

Fisher watched more military vehicles and emplacements move into position in fields and on hillsides, and wondered how long they could possibly hold out. A few days? A week? Would the Mechastaceans pick them off slowly, town by town, or incinerate every city at once? He pictured every single city on Earth in flames. He wondered whether something he could have done would’ve spared them.

Strangely, he didn’t feel much of anything at all. Just kind of cold, and kind of hollow, and weary near the point of collapse. Fisher and Alex had saved the world from one terrible fate only to deliver it straight into another.

Alex and Amanda sat silently, his arm around her shoulders, their heads leaning together. Fisher’s dad leaned forward to place his hand on the back of Fisher’s mom’s seat. Veronica was squeezing Fisher’s fingers tightly in hers.

This was all they had, these precious final moments, before the world ended.

Mason was frantically trying to get through to the White House. Fisher couldn’t hear what he was saying, but he knew it wouldn’t matter, anyway. Unless the president was a time-traveling wizard, what the Mechastaceans had asked for was simply not physically possible.

The whole world was wired with copper. You’d have to rip apart pretty much every electrical grid, house, and machine on Earth to retrieve all the copper humans had unearthed. To do the same for gold, titanium, and the others…

Fisher wondered if the Mechastaceans vastly overestimated human physical capacity and work rate … or if the whole thing was just a game to them, a sick joke.

Fisher thought about the way that he, and all of them, had been used, and the hollowness and coldness started to give way to something new. A little flame clicked on. It wasn’t much. A pilot light. But it grew brighter and hotter.

He’d been pulled back and forth between two alien races competing to take over the planet. He’d been used, tricked, conned. He and his friends were the pieces in a chess game whose players were about to knock the board right off the table. The fire filled up his gut and blossomed into his chest. He wasn’t going to be played with anymore.

If he couldn’t stop the end from coming, he was at least going to bring some alien invaders down with him.

The guards at the base barely got the gate open in time for the black SUV to barrel its way through.

“Any ideas?” Mason said as they all disembarked.

Fisher turned to him, still feeling that fire burning deep inside of him. “They’re not leaving us with any options at this point. I say we fight.”

“Seconded,” said Amanda.

Alex impatiently hummed a few bars of “Gift-Wrapped Heart,” and the door in the silo materialized and slid silently open. The group got into the big steel elevator and started to descend into the base.

“We have to be smart about a counterattack,” Mrs. Bas said. “The Mechastaceans are much too strong to take on head-to-head.”

The elevator door opened into the cavernous base. Fisher gasped when he looked down to the cave floor. The Gemini ship was aglow with shifting, flowing lights. A steady, strong rhythm carried all the way up to the top of the cavern. A hatch was open in its side.

The ship was operational.

Fisher bolted for the nearest stairs, everyone else hot on his heels. He clattered down each section of metal steps quicker than the last, knowing but not caring that a wrong slip could send him plummeting to the cave floor.

On the cave floor, the engine thrum was much stronger. Fisher felt it in his bones. His sternum buzzed with every beat of the alien machine’s cycle.

Dr. X appeared in the hatchway, a very pleased look on his face. He slowly descended the steps, raising his arms high to indicate the machine around him, as if the group might have failed to notice it.

“From me to you,” he said. “A fully functioning extraterrestrial spacecraft, completely under our control.”

“Having control of the Gemini ship might change everything,” Veronica said excitedly. “We can get close to the pirates. To sneak aboard their ship and attack them when they least expect it.”

“Oh,” Dr. X said, clasping his hands behind his back. “There is one other thing.”

A figure appeared in the hatchway behind him. Short, but imposing. Calm, but arrogant. His hands were clasped behind his back in much the same way as Dr. X’s.

Fisher stumbled backward, gasping. He couldn’t believe it.

“Three,” Fisher croaked.

Amanda dropped into a wrestling stance. Alex raised his fists into a boxing guard. Even Veronica looked ready to brawl.

Mason pulled out his strange pistol, flicked a switch on its side, and took aim.

“This is set to stun now,” he said, “but I promise, it still hurts. A lot. So, Doc, I recommend you start talking before I demonstrate exactly how much ‘a lot’ is.”

Only then did Fisher notice his parents gaping at Three. Mr. and Mrs. Bas had never gotten a good look at Fisher’s second clone during his attempted takeover of Palo Alto. Maybe they’d realized what Three was, and maybe not. Either way, coming face-to-face with another carbon copy of their only son—an evil carbon copy, at that—must have been super creepy.

“Easy now,” Dr. X said, raising his hands in a conciliatory gesture. Three stood motionless, a very slim smile on his cold features. “Allow me to explain. I have had a great deal of time and resources at my disposal. In between figuring out how to bring this ship back to life—you’re welcome, by the way—I was able to figure out the location of our friend here. With a very small amount of recovered Gemini residue for its rapid shape-changing ability and a sample of Fisher’s DNA, I was able to construct a duplicate Three. Not another clone, mind you. It was more or less a statue that appears to breathe—convincing enough, however, to slip into Three’s cell when I sent a couple of robots to retrieve him, thanks to the amazing technology on hand here.”

“Wait,” Fisher said. “A sample of my DNA? How did you get that?”

“A micro-abrasive and adhesive pad stuck to my palm,” said Dr. X, holding his hand up. “You did the rest.”

Fisher’s memory jumped back to what had seemed a weird but totally unimportant moment at the time. The moment played in super slow motion in his head, Dr. X shouting, in a crawling, low-pitched tone, Hiiiiigggghhh fiiiiiiiiive, as he put up his hand.

“I knew I should’ve left you hanging,” Fisher said bitterly.

“But he betrayed you,” Alex said. “Why would you help him?”

“Because he can help us,” Dr. X said. “He’s brilliant, clever, ruthless, and concerned above all with his own survival. As a threat to his survival, the Mechastaceans are as much his enemy as ours.”

Three still hadn’t moved. Fisher couldn’t bring himself to make eye contact with his shadowy, destructive reflection. No matter what the circumstances, Three was a threat to everyone. He was an agent of destruction, pure and simple. Just like that, a dousing bucket of water had been tossed onto Fisher’s building rage. He felt nothing but fear and confusion.

Three spoke up at last. “As I understand it, the Earth is about to be completely overrun by a hostile, vastly more powerful force.” His voice was like Fisher’s, if Fisher were hooked up to a huge iron machine that drained from him all traces of feeling. “If we allow the conflict to become open war between the aliens and the nations of Earth, millions will perish in the cross fire, and humanity will lose. What few survive the war will be slaughtered as the Mechastaceans take over the planet. Human civilization will be completely eradicated. The planet will become a giant manufacturing facility.” He inclined his head slightly to the left. “I would likely not survive the conflict, and if I did, life afterward would be very dull.”

Three had stepped forward as he spoke. In build and facial structure, he was identical to Fisher and Alex. His hair was dyed black and slicked straight back, and he wore his gray prison jumpsuit like a major general’s uniform. His eyes were the same as Fisher’s on the surface, but there was no light beneath them. Only an unyielding, stony wall.

“If you have any hope of success,” Three said, “you’ll need to enlist help not just from your friends, but from your enemies, too.”

“What do you mean?” said Amanda, scowling.

“Even the combined armies of every industrialized nation on Earth won’t be able to defeat the Mechastaceans head-on, which means you must be planning an infiltration,” said Three. “Trying to slip into their fleet on a Gemini spacecraft will be difficult no matter what, but it will be impossible if you do not first distract them with an attack elsewhere. Using your own military forces will cost human lives unnecessarily. Why not distract them with a powerful force, a race with whom they are already at war.”

“The Gemini,” said Alex slowly.

“He’s right,” Veronica said with a look like she’d just downed a grass-clippings-and-library-dust milk shake. “If we want to slip past the Mechastaceans’ defenses, we need their attention elsewhere. We need a diversion, and a big one.”

Agent Mason looked to Fisher, raising his eyebrows inquiringly.

“I agree with Three.” Fisher forced the words out. “The Gemini have the power, and the motive, to go after the Mechastaceans.”

Mason holstered his weapon.

“Because the planet is at stake, I will allow your help, if you cooperate fully and agree to constant supervision,” Mason said, addressing Three. “If you double-cross us, I’ll toss you in a cell the size of a phone booth until the sun burns out or I have a change of heart. Which I will not.”

For a few seconds, Three stayed motionless. Then the right corner of his mouth curled up very slightly, and he inclined his head.

“We have a deal then,” he said. “I will help you defeat the Mechastaceans.”

But Fisher was far from reassured. Had they given humanity a fighting chance?

Or doomed it to total extinction?