You have a brief lull in the days before the Surgeons attempt to travel to Earth. This is a time of quiet reflection, of mentally preparing yourself for the challenges to come, of organizing contingencies should things go badly.
At last, you are ready. The Surgeons' arrival is imminent. Thanksgiving morning—6:11 a.m.
Fortunate that the Surgeons' spatial conduit will open on a public holiday. Most of the employees at MetaHuman Tower are absent; you've retained only a skeleton staff. Brett Golightly has a security team stationed on the roof of MetaHuman Tower, and at various key points throughout the building. Claudette Byron has a team of sorcerers on the roof, whose enchantments should be strong enough to stabilize any spatial portal that appears on the roof, or to disappear the portal altogether. Either way, if everything goes according to plan, the disaster that you saw in the future—the explosion that destroyed the top of MetaHuman Tower—should not occur.
You stand in the middle of MetaHuman Tower's rooftop, watching your team ready themselves for the extraterrestrial incursion that will take place about five hours from now. The start of winter is still a full month away, and yet the morning is bitterly cold. The sky is black, the sun due to rise in an hour or so. You didn't sleep for long last night.
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