The object approached the city square, though I couldn’t tell by looking directly at it. I only knew because of the shuddering that rattled through the building.

We watched it along with everyone in the city, a large black obelisk that stood as tall as a five story building. It was about one hundred feet in circumference, and when it finally came into view above, there was no denying that it wasn’t a simple meteor. The fact that it sank toward the ground, slowing as it went was more than enough to indicated that. I expected heat, but the only thing I noticed was this palpable sense of force weighing on me.

“What are you thinking?” Daniel glared at the thing, clearly unnerved.

I shook my head, “Clear surface, black material, I don’t know it. Maybe obsidian? Why you’d build out of that, I don’t know. No thrusters, it’s just… falling. Slowly.” I blinked, “Gravity? That’s… that’d be pretty heavy technology. I can’t even begin to think-”

“Okay, got it, it’s freaky as hell.” He rolled his eyes, “I don’t think it’s aggressive, at least, not excessively.”

“Not necessarily.”

“Why’s that?”

“Would you care what a bunch of ants were doing around your feet if you knew you could just wipe them out instantly?” I shook my head, “But, that being the case, they have no reason to be here. We don’t have any unique resources. The wolves are one thing, they’re dumb as hell. Whatever made this is... definitely sentient.”

“More aliens.” Daniel nodded, “Awesome. Maybe they’ll be nice?”

I said nothing to that. What would they possibly gain by helping us?

I’d like to say that a naive species helping us out of this predicament would be welcome. But that was unlikely to an extreme. How far would you have to travel? What kind of resources would you need?

There were thousands of these pillars flying across the sky, who would put that much effort in? And why?

I shook my head, I’d have my answer soon.

“Lets go.” I stood and packed up a collection of objects. For a moment I thought about leaving the rifle, but with a shrug I shouldered the strap. If these things responded negatively to me carrying a weapon, then they probably weren’t here to help.

And then it wouldn’t matter anyways.

We stood in front of the building, though Daniel and I were still apprehensive about being at ground zero. Still, he stayed at my side as we watched, his short black hair and my long brown hair - even bound as it was - fluttering unnaturally against our heads. Contrary to what I expected, as the obelisk neared the ground, now only a few dozen feet to go, the force it exerted didn’t increase. If anything, it felt like it dispersed more.

I blinked, feeling my heart hammering in my chest. Briefly I looked back to Daniel, who stood transfixed by the sight before us.

Just stay put, I willed myself. My legs shook, goosebumps rose across my flesh. I had to fight to keep from darting away to cover.

Before my will snapped, the obelisk stopped falling. A foot of space beneath it, I wondered if it would simply remain suspended in the air. As if in response to my thought, shimmering light like flowing rivers of mercury flowed from the surface of the obelisk. Intricate designs flourished, the light solidifying as it went. Channels for the fountain that had been beneath the obelisk appeared, and in moments water started pouring through them. The pressure in the air started to dissipate even further, and I realized the sensation of the ground shaking was the obelisk setting firmly against its freshly created foundation.

A foundation made of some kind of pure white material, sharply contrasting the black of the space-borne object.

“What the hell was that?” Daniel gawked, stepping up to the object. In spite of a warning on my tongue, I found that I couldn’t keep my curiosity in check either. Fear still sat at the back of my mind, but seeing something materialize out of thin air did wonders for overpowering it.

A sudden high pitched sound rang in my ears. It was subtle, and I quirked an eyebrow as I looked around for its source. Everywhere at once seemed to be ringing, and Daniel seemed to be just as perplexed. Others that I could see exhibited the same motions.

Likewise, we all seemed to clamp our hands over our ears when the volume ramped up sharply. It was like a solid slap in the skull, and it passed just as quickly.

[Initializing… Connection established. Welcome ‘User’! Would you like to change your user name from ‘User’ to something else?]

“What the fuck?” I started, looking to Daniel, who had gone pale, seeming to hear the same thing.

[Unknown command. Confirming verbal database. Confirmed. Please give a command to prompt: Would you like to change your user name from ‘User’ to something else?]

“Uh… Yeah, I guess.” I blinked in complete confusion as Daniel was doing the same thing. Some others were freaking out across the way, but after a few seconds they seemed to calm enough to start shaking their heads.

[Command accepted, username will be changed, what designation would ‘User’ like to use?]

“My name, Matthew Todd.” I stood a little straighter, curiosity now firmly overpowering my sense of fear.

[Welcome user ‘Matthew Todd,’ the introduction program will begin shortly. There will be no video, only audio. We wish you luck in the ‘Rescue and Investment’ program and your continued existence!]

“What?...” Mouth suddenly dry, I turned to Daniel, feeling as though the voice wasn’t going to communicate with me at the moment. “Hey, did you hear something about Rescue and Investment just now?”

“Yeah, I did. I don’t like the sound of that.” He shook his head.

A moment later, more sound entered my head.

[“Good day to you, Human of Earth. I am Yamak Rettle, the Artorian Company’s President.”] A deep voice began, shaking me from my thoughts. [“You must be very confused right now, perhaps even afraid. While I would like to take the time to explain the situation you find yourself in with depth, I don’t have the time to give. And neither do you. At this very moment, your planet is more than likely overrun with a synthetic species that other sentient races in the galaxy call biotics. If you don’t understand some of those details, I’ll simplify it for you down to the parts that matter. There is an active and virulent invasion happening on your world. Make no mistake, those monsters you’ve been seeing are nothing compared to what will come if they are allowed to survive. Biotics are driven, consuming, and unrelenting. They will grow stronger and stronger until they cover every square inch of your world, before eventually shattering it into a trillion pieces.”]

“Holy shit.” I swallowed. Whoever this guy was, he wasn’t mincing words. Maybe this would give some people the kick in the ass they needed, but from what it sounded like, this wasn’t something that could be dealt with even if we did band together. We were too disparate and under-armed.

[“You might be thinking that there is no way to defeat these creatures right now.”] He spoke, like he was reading my mind. [“Alone, you might be right. Even advanced species like ours are wading through hell to get rid of the higher forms of the biotics. With primitive technology, you can get away with killing the hounds and such with rocks and spears. But you’ll lose against the rest, eventually.”]

“Way to go, great morale boost.” I rolled my eyes, the alien didn’t seem to realize we weren’t in the stone age anymore, either.

[“Luckily, these obelisks can be your lifeline. Biotics contain a special form of energy, this energy is dense, and even the most basic of biotics has it. Matter Energy. Like the foundation beneath this obelisk here, you too can create objects. The more biotics you kill, the more M.E. you obtain, the more you can exchange for at the obelisk. You’ll understand when you work with it, but, it should be fairly obvious what you can do with it.”] The sound paused, a smile to the voice. I didn’t even need a moment to understand that he was referring to weapons, the achilles heel to my entire plan. What else could we do with it, I didn’t know at that moment, but that was the single most important thing to me.

[“One last thing. I don’t know the state of development your world is at in this moment in time, but I do know that the obelisks will utilize your level of technology to familiarize yourselves slowly with higher grades of weapons and the like. You shouldn’t have any issues using it, but do feel free to use some of the more advanced technologies. I’ve given you all a small sum of M.E. to start you off. You can access the obelisk and your available M.E. simply by thinking. Good luck, and good hunting.”]

And then the sound stopped. I frowned, looking to Daniel, equally stupefied.

“I’m not sure what just happened.” Glaring at the obelisk, I considered everything the voice had said. “Well, let me try something.”

“Sure,” he stared at me, interested in whatever I was planning.

Commands, that’s probably what the system required. That’s what it asked for before, and it responded quickly. I might look quite silly if it didn’t work, but I didn’t have time to worry about that.

“Open system shop.” I spoke clearly, thinking about the obelisk. Daniel quirked a brow, and for a moment it didn’t seem like anything was happening.

Then the back of my hand heated up, and I yelped. Suddenly, I found a small discoloration there, shaped like a diamond. The next moment, an image popped up in front of me. “It worked.”

“What worked?” Daniel frowned.

“Say what I said, you’ll have a menu in front of your face in like five seconds.”

“For real? Cool,” he chuckled, “System shop.”

I frowned, looking to him, seeing him jump at the feeling of his hand. When I looked closely, I realized I could see what looked like a screen overlaid on his retina. “Huh, so it responds to multiple command types. Interesting.”

“This is freaky.” He laughed, “Lets see… looks like I’ve got 100 M.E., what about you?”

“Hmm?” I looked around, seeing my allocated ‘M.E.’ in the bottom right corner, “Oh, 100 M.E. also.” I put a hand to my chin, thinking to myself about what I was seeing. As I did so, I thought about the rifle. A moment later, a duplicate version of the rifle entered my vision, costing 5 M.E., and a panel that said ‘Generate’ beneath it.

I smiled.

I checked another device, immediately thinking of the largest destructive device I could recall.

“Damn, 10,000 M.E. for that?” I blinked.

“What the hell are you looking at that costs 10,000 M.E.?” Daniel balked.

“Err, nothing.” I coughed, scrolling to the least expensive version of the device. A grin spread across my face, “Say, I couldn’t convince you to get a launcher with a control panel for smart projectiles, could I?”

“Why would I…” he trailed off before a grin appeared on his face. “I’ll get a good one. You gotta fire it though, okay?”

An hour later, under cover of darkness, we stalked through the underbrush. We told no one where we were going, and we ensured that no one was following us. What we were doing right now was incredibly dangerous, and in spite of Daniel’s faith in me, I briefly wondered if what I was doing was at all sane. But, if biotics really did get stronger the longer you left them alone, then it’d be for the best to get rid of them now. From what the system told me about my armaments, and about the launcher I had, we should be fine.

We learned a few things about the obelisk system as we went. The first thing was that you could ‘hold’ the M.E. that was generating an object for thirty minutes. The mark on my hand felt warm during that time, and I imagined that it was, somehow, storing that energy.

It was freaking me out a bit though.

Though, after we were out of the city, I felt it was safe enough to unveil the device, as well as the launcher. We kept the safety measure active, and even then I dreaded the slightest leaf touching it.

That said, Daniel carried the rifle, spear, and the new pistol he purchased from the obelisk for 5 M.E.

Value of the item was less the issue, it was the mass of the item that seemed to be more important along with complexity. Or the materials. It was terrifying knowing the object I’d purchased was for 95 M.E.

“Alright, they should be in the den for another hour or two.” I reassured myself as we came up to a high ridge, overlooking a forested area.

“Hopefully they haven’t changed that too.” Daniel swallowed, well aware that if they had then we’d be surrounded by hundreds of wolves.

Biotics, wolf form biotics. They had a larger classification now.

“Alright, this should be fine, I can see where the hive is from here.” I breathed, setting up in an area with fewer trees.

“Are we close enough?” Daniel frowned, seeing that we were several city blocks away.

“If anything, I’m worried that we’re too close… but I don’t know any better spot.” I shook my head, come on, let's set up the launcher.”

He handed me the bulky launcher, and we carefully opened up the loading bay. It was something that was only vaguely reminiscent of any kind of launcher I’d ever seen. Still, it was an intuitive weapon, and the silver shine of the cartridge I placed into the tube clicked into place. Wrapped around it was a surprisingly advanced… thing. The best word I had for it was a drone, the shell would be able to home in on a predesignated target, or in our case, be controlled directly.

“Alright, ready.”

“Last chance to talk me out of this.” I swallowed hard, knowing what we were doing with this was reckless, and probably stupid.

“Nah, I want this too. If anyone’s going to kill that hive, I want it to be us.” Daniel nodded.

“Hmm… you’re right, I’d hate if someone stole it from us.” I smiled, and then blinked as a notification lit up in my eye.

[You are currently using a launcher allocated to another user ‘Daniel Drake’ and will not be able to fire the weapon. Please return the device or engage the ‘Trade’ or ‘Loan’ function with ‘Daniel Drake’ to continue.]

“Huh, it looks like the system doesn’t let people use each others weapons if they aren’t traded through the obelisk?” I blinked, “How the hell does it even know though?”

“I just got a similar notification, it said you were an ‘Illegal User.’ That’s pretty handy, don’t have to worry about our gear getting stolen and used.” He smiled, and in spite of myself I found the safety measure rather insightful. It made sense, otherwise someone would try to steal from you eventually.

“Engage ‘Loan’ function,” Daniel spoke with interest, looking at me as he did so.

[‘Daniel Drake’ is offering a ‘Loan,’ do you accept? Doing so will place you in a kill-team together, you must return the weapon before leaving party. Other standard kill-team conditions will be unchanged.]

“Accept. Looks like we’re in a kill-team now.” I looked to Daniel, seeing a strange purple diamond appear over his head. “Okay, that’s freaky.”

“Red hexagon?” He asked.

“I’m seeing a purple diamond over your head.” I shook my head, “Well, must be for preventing friendly fire or something.”

“Cool. Weird, but cool.” He sat down next to me, “Well, we’ll figure out what that’s good for later. Let’s blow that hive up and go home.”

I nodded, setting myself up. Instinctively my hands moved over safety switches, powering the console for the launcher, and set it to manual control.

“Have you used one of these before?” Daniel asked, surprised.

“No… I think the safety is, err, built in? At least general stuff for the weapon?” I frowned, looking at the small mark on the back of my hand. It was able to augment memory. That was incredibly useful, but also terrifying for what that meant it could do to me.

I didn’t want to think about that anymore at the moment. Steeling myself, I sighted the launcher, aiming at the entrance to the hive.

Several tunnels bored into the mound of wood. It looked like the trees had been warped and fused together, forming a fifty foot tall tree that dwarfed the rest of the trees in the vicinity. In fact, few trees were even left standing next to it. That would make the shot easier.

I breathed, relaxing my pulse.

I pulled the trigger, expecting the roar of a rocket. Instead, an electrical crackle filled the air, ionization setting my hair standing on end. The projectile shot out quickly though, and with very little sound. Stunned, I fumbled with the controller for a second. A joy-stick and lever controlled the projectile. It was nearly identical to the video games that I’d played with flying, and that let me fall into rhythm after a few seconds.

“Please don’t make it do that wiggle again,” Daniel’s fists clenched pale white against the log nearby, unsettled at the projectile.

“Sorry,” I grimaced as I put the rocket on target, flying fast. The control was superb, and the lever scaled the speed up and down. Daniel watched as the hive loomed, and I slowed the projectile enough to have easier control over its turning.

I was working to navigate it deeper when I dove into the entrance, sliding down what seemed like catacombs of roots and dirt. Down and down we circled, and I couldn’t help but think that the complexity was remarkable considering what had made it.

Finally the camera began picking up stragglers, wolves going deeper into the den. Seconds later the view expanded into a large hollow, full of wolves laying across the ground. It was an ocean of amalgamated fur and mineral, and larger creatures that I couldn’t identify settled closer to the center.

They looked like bears, if a bear had thick razors for fur and was birthed by a demon fused with granite.

In the very center I could see something that shined, a pale white light, like silver, and it bathed the room in its glow.

“What is that?” Daniel frowned.

“Our target, I’d guess.” I grit my teeth, pointing straight at it with the device.

I flipped the switch to full-throttle.

We braced ourselves as the drone casing exploded, followed swiftly by its payload.

The mini-nuke erupted, a second later we felt the blast. It looked like the ground had taken a deep breath, expanding upwards before collapsing downwards. Heat, fire, and smoke flew from the cracks.

We stared at it.

A reminder came to mind too late. One that said to always cover when there was an explosion.

The stone hurdled through the air, whistling as it grazed Daniel’s face. He spun at the contact, more out of reflex than damage.

“Oh, shit.” My stomach sank.

He laughed, “Whoa, that was close.”

“We need to get you medical care, now.” Panic leapt into my voice.

“What? Dude, it’s just a cut.”

“Yeah, a fucking cut from an explosion from a nuclear bomb.” His eyes suddenly went wide.

“Shit.” He breathed, looking around, “W-well, maybe there’s some radiation pills or some shit from the obelisk? We’ve gotta have a ton of M.E. after that, right?”

“Uh, right, yeah,” I sat, jumping as more debris crashed down a few dozen feet from us.

“System, show current M.E.” I called out.

What I saw made my stomach sink.

“How could this be?” The words were cliche, but the sheer incredulity at what I saw floored me.

“What? Show current M.E.” He looked to his own.

We were both greeted with a stock of negative eight hundred thousand M.E.

We’d gained nothing, we’d lost hundreds of times more than what we’d even started with.

[Use of environmental damaging weapons detected. Updated general use information to release to population.]

Another notification popped up, this one likely going to everyone on the planet. [Due to unpredicted factors, the obelisk system will now only deploy weapons known as ‘Nuclear Weapons’ when paired with specific classes. This is due to detrimental effect to the environment and to human life. Be advised, anyone currently armed with these devices will have them refunded at the nearest obelisk. Penalties for long-term environmental damage, especially in the cases of damaging other humans, is hefty. Please keep this in mind.]

“You’re fucking serious?” Daniel blanched, “Why the fuck wasn’t this mentioned?”

I gaped, still awestruck at the situation.

[Specialized Intelligence System activated. S.I.S. responding to query… please wait while connection established.]

We looked at each other as both of our hands burned, an outer layer appearing around them. A diamond sat now within a large triangular pattern, the lines far more in depth and delicate. It was complicated, several interior lines burning into our skins so fast that the pain receptors simply fizzled before we could feel any pain.

[Greetings, Daniel and Matthew. I believe you will have some questions for me?] A robotic, feminine voice called in both of our ears, clearer and far more distinct than the previous voice was.

“You could say that…”