I hadn’t been to the Family’s Calgary headquarters in nearly six months, but it was hard to forget. The windowless metal monolith occupied a prominent position in the city, sitting only a few blocks away from the city council building and as close to the center of the upper city as you could get. The area around the building was usually fairly quiet; there was a no-fly zone around it, and people typically didn’t want to risk irritating a samurai, but today it was exceptionally quiet.

  When my truck flew into the garage, it was practically empty. There were only half a dozen employee cars in the lot, and when I pulled up to the regular entrance, no one was waiting for me.

  “What the fuck is going on?” I whispered under my breath.

  I’ve received access to the Family’s inter-building navigation system, along with the room number for the meeting. Nyx reported quietly.

  “You think they dismissed most of the staff to keep this meeting quiet?”

  It seems likely. I wasn’t able to pull anything from the networks about what’s going on, so they’re keeping the information close to the chest right now.

  “Great. I guess I should get in there and find out what’s so important,” I grumbled.

  After directing my truck into an empty spot next to Sharron’s RV, I headed towards the door. The heavy security doors silently slid open, revealing the featureless, repetitive corridors within. During my previous visits, I quickly got lost in the maze-like, unlabeled corridors and required assistance to find my way in and out of the complex.

  The navigation system made getting around so much easier. As soon as I activated my augs, a virtual arrow appeared on the floor, directing me towards the meeting room, and both the rooms and intersections had augmented reality signage.

  It took about five minutes for me to get to the right meeting room, which was buried deep within the complex. Stepping through the nondescript white door, I was surprised to find something closer to a corporate boardroom than the massive briefing rooms I’d seen in my previous visits.

  Most of the seats were already occupied by a lot of familiar faces. Hel, Mirage, Dreamer, Whisperer, Zettabyte, Charlotte, Angeline, and Sharron, but there were a handful of people I didn’t recognize too. Nodding to my friends, I quickly made my way around the edge of the table and slipped into a chair next to Sharron.

  As soon as I did, Hel stood up and cleared her throat. “Thank you all for coming today. I’m sorry we couldn’t provide you with any information prior to this meeting, but what I’m about to reveal to you today has been restricted to a select group of samurai and city administrators until this point. You’ve all been called here today because you’re the strongest samurai within Calgary and may be able to assist with the situation.”

  The woman strode to the front of the room and reached for a control panel embedded in the table but paused for a moment and looked around at each of us. “I’d like to ask that you don’t discuss what you’re about to hear with anyone outside this room. The situation is serious, and we’d prefer to avoid causing a panic.”

  She waited for a couple of people to nod before finally activating the control panel. A small panel in the ceiling slid back, exposing a hidden holographic projector, which flickered for a moment before springing to life, revealing a map of the solar system.

  I squinted at the image. I wasn’t exactly an expert on the planets, but my eyes were immediately drawn to the conspicuous red line going from the third planet to the fourth, along with the pulsing white dot around the red planet.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  “A couple weeks ago, a couple of surface telescopes observed anomalous activity on Mars. The Family has long feared that the antithesis might attempt to gain a foothold in the system by landing on other planets, so they sent a survey satellite to get a clear picture of the situation.” Hel paused again, taking a deep breath before continuing. “The situation is much worse than we could possibly have imagined.”

  “This is a real-time image from the satellite,” Hel declared as the image zoomed in on the fourth planet. I didn’t have a fucking clue what Mars looked like normally, but I would bet it wasn’t supposed to have what looked like a titanic green root network that was visible from orbit.

  “We’re not sure when the antithesis arrived on Mars, but from what we can tell, they’ve been terraforming the planet for some time. Spectral analysis suggests they might have had some sort of spore, which helped enrich the soil and establish a light atmosphere. Once that was established, they established a complete, thriving ecosystem within months. High-res images taken from the satellite have revealed the existence of several forty-threes already active on the planet, which means the antithesis are already extremely far in their development cycle.” The image changed to a blurry image of what I could only assume was a forty-three. It was hard to tell exactly how big or dangerous the thing was without a sense of scale. All I could really make out was a ton of scything limbs. Too many, in my opinion.

  Hushed conversation erupted around the room. Although I couldn’t make out the words, I could tell people were taking the news in very different ways. There were tones of curiosity, anger, and even fear. An incursion worth of antithesis was bad, a planet full? Unbelievable.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Sharron suddenly sit up and lean forward. “Wait, you’re keeping this from the general public and most of the other samurai but sharing this information with us? I can only think of one reason, and I don’t particularly like the implications.”

  Hel bit her lip and nodded. “The Family has been in contact with dozens of other Samurai based organizations around the world, and together they’ve decided this threat cannot be allowed to develop any further. They’ve decided the best course of action would be to gather as many Class III samurai and above to scour Mars clean. That’s why you’ve all been invited here today, to ask you to participate in this offensive.”

  “You want us to lay siege to an entire planet?” Whisperer asked in disbelief.

  “What other option do we have? We can bombard them with weapons of mass destruction, but as many of you know, we tried that tactic on our own planet, and the antithesis survived those attacks. If we leave them for long enough, the antithesis will develop beyond what even the strongest samurai can deal with. We must strike at them while we’re capable,” Hel explained.

  One of the men I wasn’t familiar with leaned back and shook his head. “And how exactly are these orplanning to get what I can only assume are thousands of samurai to Mars? To my knowledge, the Family has a number of orbital platforms, but very few of our members have interplanetary ships.”

  Despite the meeting room being fairly dark, I could clearly make out the man’s features. He was bald, heavily muscled, and had lines of glowing circuitry running beneath the skin of both his exposed arms and the back of his neck.

  “A couple people have already volunteered to either purchase the required catalogs and a couple of transport ships or are in the midst of upgrading the orbital stations. There’ll be more than enough transport capacity for everyone,” Hel explained.

  “And this isn’t a joke, right? I just have to check because this,” Angeline waved her hand towards the hologram, “is a little unbelievable. How did the antithesis go undetected for so long?”

  “Our best guess is that once the spores did their job, the first life forms that developed were subterranean species. Tuberous plants and small soil aeration models. By the time they emerged on the surface, the hive network and planetary development werfe already quite advanced. We’re actually lucky we caught on as early as we did,” Hel replied.

  “So, when does this strike force leave?” Zetta asked quietly.

  “The first wave? Ideally a week from now. Additional forces will be dispatched every few weeks until the threat has been completely eliminated.”

  “Won’t that leave the earth relatively undefended? How will we handle incursions with such a large amount of our forces offworld?” another woman I didn’t recognize asked. She had a long black cloak; I could make out that much, but all her other features were hazy and obscured. Perhaps she was using some sort of stealth tech, but I had no idea why she wouldn’t disengage it during the meeting.

  “Even though I’m sure that everyone recognizes how dangerous this antithesis buildup is, I expect there are a number of people that will refuse to participate. It shouldn’t be too difficult for the Class II samurai to deal with most incursions, but we expect enough stronger members will stay back that we’ll still have the strength to deal with any emergencies,” Hel replied, before swiping her finger across the control panel and shutting down the hologram. The room was quiet for a few seconds, so she swept her gaze across everyone. “Any more questions?”

  “How long do we have to decide?” Whisperer asked quietly.

  “Ideally, within the next three days, but the sooner the better. I’d appreciate you letting me know even if you don’t plan to come, because we need to acquire supplies for the trip, and having exact numbers would help,” Hel declared. “I’m sorry for just springing this on you, but no one expected a situation like this to develop, and we’ve got a fairly narrow window to deal with it. I hope you’ll all make the right choice here.”

  She slowly lowered herself into the chair at the end of the table. “You’re dismissed.”

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