Washington

Keisha looked at the deep hole in the ground, some ten metres wide.

Like most people, she expected 1TNT  megaton of energy to do a lot more damages - to level the city and its surroundings.

All that was happened was a moderate earthquake. While she looked at the hole, informations from the rest of "It" filled the blanks.

The penetrator had its frontal shield up to the maximum, and was a far newer design than the linear accelerator that fired it.

It managed to hold up not only through the whole atmosphere, but also through the first few kilometres of the planetary surface. At around 8 km of depth , it finally broke down and dispersed the whole 980 kilotons of residual kinetic energy as a jet of plasma and shockwaves directed toward the centre of the planet, that emerged as a modest vibration, only registrable by seismographs, centred around Amsterdam Island, in the Indian Ocean.

A million tons of TNT may be a lot over a town but, as far as the whole planet goes, it is the energy of a 6th level on the Momentum scale earthquake, with an impossibly deep epicentre.

Keisha expected that, at least , a rupture going through the whole planetary crust would lead to the birth of a Volcano, but it was evident that the channel was way too narrow for the dense lava to manage to climb more than a few thousand meters, before solidifying.

In all, the effect had been that a needle-less injection has on human skin - virtually undetectable.

It had been just a warning shot, a hell of a warning shot but - still - nothing more.

The bastard had been rational, even in the middle of its monumental grief over the death of Ice. Was it always rational, even when it pursued its crazy amusements? Deep down where she couldn't go?

And , while at it, why exactly had it did what it did to the Marines? It usually refrained from this class of showdowns, not the least because... they were just too easy, for the damn thing.

Keisha  was a match for the Betan "super-humans" and for the smaller battle 'bots, yet she was two or three magnitudes weaker than "It" full battle avatars...  things that didn't look human, even in their two sizes too large overcoats.

Using one of them on a battalion of Marines, however good were their armours, was challenging like shooting birds with an Oerlikon auto-cannon, and probably more boring.

"Ms. Keisha Lawson?"

She had felt the men circling her over the past three minutes - it is not difficult to spot a black woman just a hair shorter than two meters.

Once thing she had learned, these few years, was that it made no sense behaving like a normal person - running, hiding, all sensible choices, if she was a simple criminal.

She was accused of no crime - that she knew of... after all, modern governments have a habit of manufacturing accusations, to justify their shenhanigans - which was of no importance anyway, as she could simply tear through anything that may try to stop her.

"What if I am?"

"The President of the United states would like to have a word with you."

"And you are?"

"Special Agent Timothy Gibson, United States Secret Service." - the man was in his late '40s, stocky, with out-of-style moustaches and salt&pepper temples.

"And the Lady wants to meet me?"

Agent Gibson was taken a little aback - even in this mad age of aliens and robots, a time that brought into question the power and dignity of the country, a direct invitation from the POTUS usually elicited a lot more surprise.

"Please, Mr. Gibson, lead the way" - Keisha followed the man, with the slightly lanky walk that she had started using since she passed 6'4".

The limousine was very opulent... the doors were still a bit small for her.

She loved so much when she was just six feet two, tall and imposing but not yet a freak that had to worry about doors. She also loved when she thought to be already in her 30s and that  her mind was older than her body - she loved a lot of things that were now gone.

Ever since she started flying, almost fifteen years before, the times Keisha had been inside a car could be counted on one hand's fingers, so she wasn't really prepared for the drive - Gibson found himself thinking about some  savage kid dropped in front of modern gizmos. She kept moving on the seat, squeezing the soft leather with her long fingers, and playing with the mini-bar content. Like an hyperactive adolescent.

He had his orders, however, and if the highest power in his country wanted to meet a hobo, he would have brought that hobo to the Oval office, period. In fact, he suspected that he was exactly doing that.

Jane Mullett saw the tall black entering the briefing room, and draw her breadth. The reports didn't make the black monster justice... she was very tall, and her face was gorgeous. Like a NWBA pivot that could pose for Vogue.

The young woman was also, intelligence agencies told her, the main interface with a  power that had destroyed  an entire Marines battalion in powered armours  an, was responsible, possibly, for an extremely odd astronomical phenomenon.

The fall of a sub-relativistically fast meteorite, right on the border of the Lake in front of George Washington's monument.

A power that had already proven capable to infiltrate agents, bypassing the best security systems and officials on the planet, inside the very Oval Office.

"It is nice to see that you are reasonable, Ms. Lawson, and that you accepted to meet me. I think that we have things to discuss, you and me."

"I fear that we have nothing to discuss, really.  I do not understand, why am I here?"

"Our security agencies have  identified you as one of the speak-persons of this 'god' group, that is responsible  for a terrible terroristic attack on American soldiers."

"Your soldiers had just killed, with extreme prejudice, a 12 years old girl that had never harmed any living creature more complex than grain, in her whole life. Unfortunately, I admit that our 'god' father has pretty terrifying ideas, on the subject of how to retaliate to this kind of events"

"You are a member of a terrorist organization... I may have you detained indefinitely, pending trial."

"Indeed, but then you'd have to track down someone else, to act as a relay. So, please, can we be grown ups, and let the propaganda catch-phrases sleep? Your people knows all too well that I am not a terrorist, nor am I associated with terrorists. In reality, I am not associated with everybody."

The silence continues for a while.

"What does your people want?"

"Nothing, really. What does your people want?"

"We have responded to a grave act of provocation, on the part of your masters."

"Provocation?"

"One of your... monsters, entered this room, after disabling my security staff and then killing my assistant, Lindsay Loane, in a terrible way."  

"That? that was a prank."

"A prank?"

"A bad idea, in fact... but, you know, your assistant didn't die."

"I am sorry? She was dead, I saw her, her body was examined by our coroner, who confirmed the terrible things that your assassin did to her! How can you call it a prank?"

"Has the coroner found an inexplicable void space in her brain, like something was there and was then removed without opening the skull?"

The president interrogates, with her eyes, the man of the Secret Service standing next to the beautiful monster, who answers - "Yes, though the coroner proposed that the assassin was responsible of it, for unknown reasons".

"It was the remote control's place, before it self-destructed".

The tall woman's words are flat, matter-of-facts, even as she continues.

"It was a mistake, we should just have had  'Lindsay' commit a nice suicide... it would have been puzzling, but your government would have continued ignoring us, by and large."

"Remote control?"

"Inside her head... my master has some ten thousand bodies, virtually completely human, that he uses as interfaces. Tthey are clones built around a modified brain, that is more like a remote node in a distributed computing grid than a remote control, really, but the definition stuck... way before I was born."

Jane Mullet, president of the U.S., is more than a bit frightened by the implications of such a kind of mole.

"And Lindsay was? One of yours?"

"I am one of mines. Lindsay was a 1/10000th of my big, angry, cruel, sadistic boss - I said that it was a bad idea, at the time, but, what do you want? I think that it really loathed you, toward the end. All those years watching the shady deals behind U.S. politics... it is not a place for a 'god' to be."

"But... she was with me, since the primaries!"

"Don't worry, I am sure that it had some bodies in Glouart's campaign, too -  it doesn't matter who won, as long as you have access to the winner. We learned that from corporate warfare - give money to both, through subsidiaries, and you'll own a share of the country... anyway."

Jane Mullet was an intelligent person - intelligent enough to realize when she was threading in unknown waters, and now she felt in a deep, black sea.  A count was reading "experts" reports on the implications of a technological post-humanity that, thank God, never arrived. Another was dealing with someone that was born into it.

"She was... not human? A puppet?"

"Yes. The girl that your marines killed, was a girl - a vegan, twelve years old, really, non-violent, optimist and full of trust in the possibility of humans for doing good things."

"She was a two meter and a half monster!"

"Born and raised on the Moon, then she spent three years on an asteroid, before the death of our creator forced her back here, to become the central emotional nexus of our big bad 'god'. Her tallness was a by-product  of growing in low gravity. Her immense desire for human contact, the source of her love for your species."

"She was a member of a terrorist  -"

"You had no idea what you were doing, what you were against - you used strength, in a mighty, decisive coup against an elusive adversary. The Anipos had made our 'remote control' - my 'god' had to retire all of his bodies that used that tech and were in a position to  be scanned by the damn Ani, so you managed to blind-side it. Your puppets entered that warehouse and gunned down fifty-three persons. 52 were remote drones, one was a very important real person. The source of all the nicety inside my master."

"This is ridiculous - the USA cannot admit that some foreign power act on their soil as it pleases."

"The USA will well admit it, or they will cease to exist as a sovereign state. Imagine every stupid white power militia, every black Muslim cell no more aimless, but infiltrated and then controlled by a unified intelligence that has no problems coordinating ten thousand different actions. This country has grown less and less democratic over the last few decades, and your security apparatus can hardly keep up with the extremists that this is engendering, given the limits that maintaining the appearances of a democratic state still imposes."

"Or, if you prefer, imagine the next shots, like the one here in Washington,,,  exploding in the high atmosphere, instead than holing themselves in the Earth's mantel. I think that your scientists already quoted a figure, for its energy?"  

"One megaton"

"Care to see if your glorious ABM system - for which you almost ended exchanging blows with China - can stop one of those, with a 40 seconds waning time?"

"What do you want?"

"Nothing -  we do not exist, we never existed, and your government will continue ignore our existence.
All you have to do is doing like the Anipos - acting as if we were but a tall tale, even if you know better."

"The Anipos? They know of this .- aberration?"

"Of course - their robots are a bit better than your technology, a lot better than what they have shown. The 'bots know plenty of us - they just do not share the info with their masters, of course. The members of the legation... let's say, no true Anipos loves to leave the home system. Hence, all the ones here, are not "true" anything - they are off-casts, exiled where nothing shiny will ever happen.Those that know, have even less reasons than the 'Bots, to inform their masters - or do you really believed that offering them the most sexy women of the world, to play with, was enough to turn them? They pass you information, for spite."

"What?"

"We know how your CIA found the Utica compound... Earth money is meaningless for an Anipos, but sex is sex is sex, right? Cloning Jane Fonda was a nice touch, Chapeau! Bravo! But, isn't it a crime against humanity, human cloning? What would the  U.N. say?"

"I obviously do not know the operative details of how our agencies acquire their informations..."

"Ya, da, yes..." - the sarcastic smile dies, as the black girl suddenly widens her eyes, with something resembling fear - "... it seems that I said all that I had to say. Now, it would be nice if you call me an ambulance."

And then, as she lose consciousness, "I forgot that tomorrow was my 21st y".

Fade to black, and her world ends.