PROLOGUE

“Our satellites came down like so many shooting stars,” he told Ivan. “What few we managed to get up in the first place. We had no idea what we were dealing with.”

“But you tried,” Ivan said. “You fought.”

He dredged up a rasping, humorless chuckle. “Yes. We fought. And most of us died.”

He regarded Ivan critically across the crate that served as his dinner table. The battered lawn chair and three-legged stool he and Ivan were perched on rounded out his wealth in furniture, unless you counted the ragged futon in the clapboard-and-sheet-metal shack behind him.

Ivan seemed very young, very enthusiastic. So much so that at first he worried the fellow was acting, was another collaborator tracking down what little remained of XCOM. But there was something about him that was convincing.

Besides, he didn’t have much to lose. If Ivan wasn’t what he seemed—well, he wasn’t going to be taken alive. And it would be over.

He took another drink of what he charitably thought of as whiskey. He remembered a time when he had savored a good Highland single malt or American rye. Back then, he would spend half an hour sipping a single shot. Now, he had to make do with whatever rotgut he could find. But then again, these days he only cared about the impact of the drink.

“What do you want from me, son?” he asked.

“There are many like me,” Ivan said. “Many with the will to fight the aliens, to win our world back. But we need leaders, men and women who were there. Yes, the aliens beat you, but—”

“The aliens didn’t beat us,” he snapped, half-surprised at his own sudden anger. Still inside of him, after all these years and a determined campaign to deaden it.

“Sir?”


He took another drink, a long one.


“So you have people willing to fight,” he said. “That’s great. But you need much more than that. We had it all—an international coalition to fund us, the best scientists and engineers in the world, highly trained soldiers, air-craft, excellent leaders—everything. We shot two of them down; did you know that?”

“No, sir,” Ivan said.

“Well, we did. We were making headway on cracking their technology, developing the tools we needed to beat them. Our losses were heavy, yes, but we believed we had a chance. I believed.”

“Then . . . what happened?” Ivan asked.

“The coalition caved on us, that’s what. Gave us up. I’m not sure which country went first—it’s not like they did it to our faces. But in the end they cut us off. The aliens hit our headquarters and major facilities in a coordinated strike. Someone gave them our locations.”

“Why?”

“Panic,” he grunted, taking another drink. “They were afraid that if we kept fighting, the aliens would exterminate us all.”

“Do you think they would have?” Ivan asked.

He snorted. “They could have done that from the beginning. Instead they were conducting small raids, abducting people, spreading fear. I think they got exactly what they were after. A compliant population of sheep.”

“I’m no sheep, sir,” Ivan said. “My comrades aren’t sheep. My father was an XCOM squaddie. He died fighting them in Minsk.”

“What was his name, your father?”

“Sasha Fedorov.”

“I remember him. He was a good man.”

“I didn’t know him,” Ivan said. “I was still in my mother’s womb when he died.”

Ivan hesitated for a moment, seeming to sit up straighter in his seat. “Sir, will you help us?”

“Haven’t you been listening? We had all of Earth’s resources at our fin­gertips. And we lost. What have you got?”

“Heart, sir. Determination.”

“Heart. Determination. That and this bottle of whiskey might be able to get you drunk enough to forget the whole thing. Ninety percent of the human race is perfectly fine with the way things are now. More than fine, from what I can tell. Who are you even fighting for?”

“The abductions haven’t stopped, sir,” Ivan said. “Thousands go missing every year.”

“Right,” he said wryly, “And for the most part—you call yourselves ‘Natives,’ right? You get the blame for that. The people swallow that right along with the rest of ADVENT propaganda and that god-awful stuff they’re feeding people now.”

“CORE, sir.”

“Yeah. CORE. ‘Reclaimed protein’. That should raise a few eyebrows. Reclaimed from what? But it doesn’t. People eat it. And those weird vegeta­bles . . .” he shook his head.

“There are more of us than you think,” Ivan said. “And many more who just need a little hope. You can give them that hope, sir.”

“No,” he said. “I can’t. Because there isn’t any. The war ended twenty years ago. More people head into the New Cities every day.” He took another swal­low. “Now kindly get the hell out of here. I’m bored with this conversation.”

“It took me a long time to find you, sir,” Ivan said.

“Yes, thanks for that,” he said. “It means I have to move again. Go. Leave all of this. I’m not asking again.”

Ivan reluctantly stood, and for a moment the young man looked just like his father from almost two decades earlier.

For an instant, something hitched within him, and he remembered how he’d felt back then.

The pride. The purpose.

The Commander.

It was a fuzzy memory, and as he watched Ivan disappear into the Peruvian cloud forest, he began taking larger gulps in the hopes of eras­ing it entirely.