Present day.

They arrived at the capital of New Felix, Panthera, the next afternoon since leaving Reekmeer, being able to travel through the day and night, alternating sleep. The Bears ability to thrive on no sleep, their strength and conditioning which enabled them to piggy-back their companions, Rosaya's night vision, and everyone's ability to walk among the Creatures of the Night were all incredibly useful tools to travel and hopefully beat their enemies to Panza and her city.

Luka desperately wanted to save one Six. She would be an incredible ally in whatever was happening, before she was kidnapped and her city destroyed.

Luka realized the crew were still human. A sleep deprived Rosaya thought she had seen a person disappear in the ground in the distance while guiding the Bears through the jungle, and agreed she had to rest at one point.

The bugs in the jungle were large and intensely irritating, but luckily the Bears supplied the crew with repellent and the Ravens with sleeved jackets. During their rests, Luka continued to teach his comrades everything he knew, and he realized the Bears too were well trained in combat.

Signey was lighthearted and kept the group cheerful, Rosaya had a keen sense of keeping everyone's mind on track, Adrian was far smarter than he let on, and Luka began to realize how alike he and Tristan were. Tristan would hang onto every word of Luka's, but was confident enough to question his decisions of paths to take.

Breaking through vines and wet vegetation, there were early signs they were not the first to arrive. Rosaya's theory of multiple armies and more than one visitor the Sixes were trusting became more and more probable. When they approached the jungle opening of the large Tiger province, scattered around the perimeter of the great bronze walls of the city but many meters from the walls themselves, were oblong, silver, and red objects. Thousands upon thousands like tombs in a graveyard. The Field of the city offline above.

"Explosives," Tristan said, identifying the missiles that surrounded the city, his rifle slung to his side.

The crew sprinted to inspect. Luka picked one of the missiles up in his hands, and believed Tristan was right. But something was wrong.

"They haven't exploded. What's going on?" Signey exclaimed, looking at one herself.

Luka analyzed the thing in his hand, thoughtfully weighing it, when suddenly three others that were near his feet shot up from the ground and latched themselves to his shield. His comrades readied themselves in an attack position when they heard the tang tang, tang, and relaxed coming to the same realization Luka made. "They're not rockets. They're magnets. All of them."

Adrian's hypothesis made Luka's skin crawl, and he knew he was right. Adrian said, "The Outlanders, they dropped these just beyond the walls. It probably sapped the Tiger's energy. That explains the front gate being slammed open, they were unable to defend it."

The Tiger's had arguably the most profound Gift. They could manipulate electromagnetism. Beyond controlling metal from afar, there were rumors of some of their Hosts being able to make their enemies hallucinate by tapping into the electrochemistry of their attacker's brains, and some able to bend light around them to camouflage with their surroundings.

Luka held their apparent weakness in his hand and discarded it angrily. They were late again.

The Raven's confirmed Adrian's analysis. The front gate was savagely knocked inwards. Silently, Luka motioned the crew to follow him along the jungle floor. The crew was sweating in the intense humidity of the golden and dark green jungle, the knee-high jungle grass waving as they ran. Luka drew his pistol, hand drenched in sweat, and ran towards the front gate of the city. They peered inside.

Outlanders with yellow face paint and thick armor, many more than were in Oddisy, swarmed the streets. They gunned down unconscious Tigers with their rifles, beating and laughing at people who were too weak to stand. There were thousands. Luka's heart sank. He felt like he failed another civilization. Well over ten thousand lives snuffed out because he was too late and overmatched by this ominous enemy.

"Luka, we need to go. We need to go now. We can still save Orconia City, your home," Tristan whispered in his ear, unable to hide his traumatization of reliving what his people had gone through, seeing the Outlanders walking up and down the streets doing the same to a new group.

"Why are there so many more here?" He asked his crew, who shrugged their shoulders in fear.

Then it dawned on him. They were looking for whatever Maeve told him about.

Maeve's voice echoed in Luka's mind, Panza has something we cannot let fall into his hands.

"I have to go in," Luka said, his companions wide eyed and aghast.

"Luka that's suicide. For what?" Adrian asked.

"I... I'm not sure. I cannot ask you to come in with me," he said to them as he grabbed the small golden key Maeve had handed him from his bag. Luka looked around into the bronze stretching buildings of Panthera, and saw one that stood out.

A golden and taller facility attached to the bronze ones, undoubtedly where Panza lived, luckily stood only a couple hundred meters from the front gate. He had to get to it. He had to get whatever Maeve spoke of before the Outlanders did.

"I'm coming with you," Tristan said to Luka.

Rosaya grabbed Tristan's arm and said, "Tristan don't. Both of you. You won't come out."

Tristan held his fellow Raven's hand, and said, "We will. I promise."

Luka felt as if he was looking at a reflection of himself. He would not be able to argue with him.

"Hide in the jungle, and cover us when we come back," Luka said, securing her rifle in her hands. The Bears and Rosaya nodded and returned to the jungle.

Luka and Tristan, pulses quickened, timed their sprint. They fell upon the stretch of buildings connected with the great golden one meticulously avoiding the eyes of the Outlanders.

Luka slowly and silently opened a nearby window of a bronze flat building, and the two slipped inside the dark hallway.

Footsteps were everywhere. Some were getting closer from the immediate corner. They took aim, Luka's pistol and Tristan's rifle. Outlanders came in sight, and they fired their silent weapons. Luka slid and caught their bodies before they thudded to the floor. Without Luka instructing Tristan, he began hiding the bodies in nearby rooms. He was a quick learner.

They continued down the narrow hallway in the cover of its darkness, moved up the stairs to the second floor, Luka motioning to hide in crevices of the dark bronze halls as too many Outlanders passed, holding their breath.

They arrived at the pedway leading to the next building. The golden one, connected to the bronze one from the inside. Hopefully Panza's. A sharp grim whisper from Tristan cut through Luka's scheming thoughts.

"Oh my Gods," Tristan said, looking down into the streets from the window from the pedway. Luka followed his gaze to the street below.

The Outlanders crowded around three lifeless and bloodied bodies, cheering louder than usual. The bodies wore bronze crowns and slim white outfits stained with the red sigil of the Tiger, and their own blood.

"It's Panza. And her children."

**34 years ago**

After Samuel's reign decisively concluded, the Alva children rounded up Samuel's supporters within Nighthawk and imprisoned them. Panza tasked herself with clearing the basement of Nighthawk, the Research Division.

A hand grabbed hers in the darkness of the laboratory, startling her.

"Maeve," Panza gasped, and Maeve held a desperate finger to her mouth. "What are you doing here? Everyone thinks you're dead," Panza whispered to her cousin. She had never seen her cousin so wide-eyed, scared, and disheveled.

Trembling, Maeve handed Panza a stick of bark. It appeared to glimmer in the darkness. "We don't have a lot of time. You have to promise me to keep this safe, don't let anyone have it."

Panza, confused, looked into her cousin's eyes. "Maeve, I don't understand... Come with me, I can keep you safe now. My father, he gave us unimaginable security. Take my hand."

Panza knew her cousin well, and she could tell Maeve already knew about her new powers from the apple. Still, she hid, and still, she was frightened.

She said to Panza, "Promise me, Panza. You're the strongest of your siblings. I have to stay here. I... I have work to do. Don't tell anyone you have seen me here. I beg you, Panza. Please."

"Okay, Maeve. But you have explaining to do."

Maeve paused a moment and tucked her dark hair behind her ear. "Do you remember the Man in Red, the one we told you about at the Gothreek Mountains? Where your sister died?"

Panza closed her eyes. While her own siblings would repress the terrible memory, Panza relived it each time she was forced to remember it. It was her way of honoring her sister. It was her way of being true to her nature.

"I... I found out what he was. A distant cousin to our species, one that left the First Planet much earlier than us. His people, they have a region in their brain, home to millions of brain cells called mirror neurons. But Panza, they are infinitely more complex than our own... It allows them to be more empathetic than we can possibly imagine. He was the last one of his kind."

Panza continued to listen, concerned yet confused.

"When he looked at us in the cave... At me, even towards the monster Mayla... He had a face of compassion, of kindness. Then when he looked at Solan, or Lleyton, I'm not certain..." Maeve's face relived the moment in the cave. The face of the Man in Red would never be free from her mind. His kind face morphing to one of horror and ferocity when he looked at her brother, Solan, and cousin, Lleyton.

"Maeve, you can't be serious. Because your brother and mine received glares from a man, you're choosing to hide here?"

"Not just any man," Maeve snapped at her. "They can't be trusted, Maeve. He saw something in them. You must watch them closely, and keep my secret."

Panza knew her cousin to be just as smart as her evil aunt, but far more truthful. The words she absorbed chilled her to her bones. Despite Maeve's immense distrust for her brother, Panza dreaded telling her cousin Solan's fate.

"Maeve, Solan's dead. Samuel imprisoned him, and his loyalists were all too happy to tell us they killed him. They had his blood to prove it."

Speechless, Maeve blinked several moments. She fought back a tear and rubbed her cheek but recomposed herself, uncertainty surrounding her like a dark cloud. "Your brother, then. Watch him close. He is not who you think."

She closed Panza's fingers around the strange piece of shining wood.

Panza nodded to her compassionately. She would honor her cousin. "If something happens to me and you need whatever this is, look to my ceiling."

She passed Maeve a golden key.

***

Luka couldn't think about it. Not now. But the despair was seeping into his soul.

Before his eyes laid the unkillable, killed. The invincible, vincible. These enemies they were fighting demonstrating unthinkable and frightening capabilities. Tristan and Luka realized Nik, Nik's children, Aaron, and Aaron's children... they also undoubtedly faced the same fate as Panza and her kin.

Luka's mind started drifting to the elegant face of Eeva's, then to her now vulnerable father, and he buried the thought by clasping his eyes tight.

They moved forward. Tears in their eyes, both recognizing their enemies were even more formidable than they thought, seemingly everywhere at once and masters of death. The Sixes thought to be invulnerable, very much vulnerable.

Suddenly anger flooded Tristan and Luka. It was an anger of desperation. They ran along the golden pillared hallways of Panza's facility with inflamed purpose, gunning down Outlanders in their paths, rapidly hiding, hunting, running, and hiding more bodies with impunity as they shuffled through the crimson carpet.

Tristan scanned behind them and beneath as they came upon the largest door in the complex. Below them on the first level, the door was a rich brown with gold trim among bronze carpet and portraits of Panza and her family. It had to be Panza's chamber. A group of Outlanders were pounding on it with a battering ram.

"They'll open the door for us," Tristan whispered, turning his rifle on the Outlanders below who did not see them.

"Right when they breach," Luka whispered back, readying his pistol.

As the door smashed down, a flurry of bullets erupted from Luka and Tristan's weapons hitting their targets. The Outlanders floundered to the floor, this time loudly. They would have to hurry.

They sprinted through the door.

Before them was a pristine golden red crimson room, with rich wood and odd structures strewn along shelves. Bed sheets of magnificent silk were torn, as were sections of the shining crimson walls. Luka realized someone was here, but it was not someone who was searching for something. It was someone searching for somewhere to hide.

"Help me look, the ceiling," Luka said, standing on a dresser and heaving at the metal tile above, remembering Maeve's words. Tristan helped, and it gave to the side. Luka pulled himself up into the hollow ceiling, and before him, was a rustic looking chest in the darkness. He reached as far as he could and collected it into his arms. The chest was far too light to be anything important, and it was almost as if it were empty.

As they turned to leave, Tristan tapped on Luka's shoulder, and directed his gaze to the floor panels. One seemed off, skewed somehow. While Rosaya had night vision, Tristan could see heat signatures and Luka could tell something important was hidden away. Luka grabbed Tristan's rifle without saying a word and smashed the ground with the butt of it. It smashed open, and below, Luka saw two bound individuals. A male and female.

More Hosts.

Luka frantically tried the key Maeve gave him in the chest as Tristan freed the prisoners, and to his shock, it popped open.

He pulled before him a brownish gold piece of wood with a handle and sharpened at one end. This is what you made me get, Maeve? A stick?

"Come with us," Tristan said to the Tigers, who were so exhausted they could hardly comprehend his words.

"We'll have to carry them," Luka said, putting the piece of wood in his waist band. 

With the Tigers on their backs, Luka and Tristan retraced their steps to the original building, slipping back outside through the windows they had entered stealthily. They heard yelling and commotion behind them and in the streets. They'd been discovered.

They sprinted back towards the entrance as fast as they could given the new weight on their backs and with the knowledge their cover was blown.

Bullets began firing around them, dirt exploding upwards from the fragments of firing metal.

Hot metal pierced Luka's calf and he dropped to the turf in pain beside a building. He turned towards his attackers and unleashed the rest of his ammunition, dropping as many Outlanders as times he pulled his trigger with well placed shots. He was out of ammo, Outlanders closing, bullets whirring past his head.

Behind the Outlanders, he saw a tall dark man in crimson and white, slowly and arrogantly walking towards Luka. Tristan escaped through the front entrance, but Luka was doomed.

With a gasp, the Tiger on his back let out a grunt and held out his arm, and weakly said, "Run," into Luka's ear.

The air appeared to ripple, followed by a loud crack that propagated through the atmosphere. The closest Outlanders fell to their backs, the shockwave incapacitating them. With the last bit of electromagnetic energy the Tiger had, he threw the approaching Outlanders to their backs by grasping onto their metal vests from afar. 

It bought Luka just enough time. He hobbled to the entrance, and to his surprise Signey was there. All of his friends were waiting for him. They hadn't hid in the jungle as he instructed, but they came back. For him, and Tristan.

Rosaya and Tristan fired their rifles, covering Luka as he exited the city. Luka got on Signey's back as she speedily ran into the jungle, and unslung his shield to protect them from the showers of hot metal of their attackers. Adrian scooped up both of the Tigers and followed with one on each shoulder running the same speed as if they were feathers, Rosaya and Tristan right behind, emptying their bullets backwards towards the city stopping the advance and chase of the Outlanders.

The female Tiger looked back towards the city in and out of consciousness as Adrian carried her to safety, and caught a glimpse of the dark man dressed in crimson. He smiled at her as the crew escaped.

**

The Raven's told the crew that the Outlanders were out of sight and off their trail, and threw away their weapons which were now out of ammo and too cumbersome to carry.

Signey placed Luka down, his back on a tree. They had ran and ran and ran until they were in Northern Orconian province at nightfall. Signey wiped the blood from Luka's leg with a cloth from her bag, and realized his injury beneath was healed, the bullet fragments forced out.

"Cool," she said with a cute smile. "Did you get it? Did you get what you were looking for?"

Luka nodded, and showed the wooden object to Signey, who was just as confused and unimpressed as he was. He could tell she tried to shyly hide her disappointment.

The Tigers remained unconscious. Luka waited impatiently for them to awaken, but he understood their fatigue, especially the male. He undeniably saved Luka from the incoming Outlanders with his metal-bending abilities, but using his power was an exhausting event.

Tristan was the one to inform everyone of the tragic news. "Panza's dead. So are her kids."

"Impossible," Adrian could only say.

"How do you know?" Rosaya asked, fear in her voice.

Everyone knew the implications. It meant their own leaders were dead, too, if true. Even their kin. Their Sixes, gone forever.

"We both saw her," Luka said, his face grim with defeat. He added, "It's a pattern. Every capital, two Hosts being left alive by someone. Every city, they've been exploiting the people's strengths – and weaknesses. They drugged the Bears with sleeping gas. Blinded the Raven's. Used the magnets to drain the Tigers."

The female Tiger stirred and woke. The crew swarmed her, introducing themselves and informing her what happened to them, their back stories, recanting everything from when Luka woke in Orconia City to meeting the Bears in Reekmeer.

Everyone waited in anticipation to see if she remembered hers. Her name was Talia Greegorsk. She was older than Signey but younger than Rosaya. Dark hair and ice blue eyes with delicate features made her more than pleasant to look upon.

Luka could tell the other boys were enamoured with her, but he himself was not. In a weird way, he tried to force himself to be, in an attempt to keep Calysa and Eeva from gliding into his thoughts, but his attempts were always feeble.

"Panza, she called every citizen to the wall. That it was an emergency. But something was draining all of our strength. We