Close Remembrance

Prologue The Krinar walked down the street in Moscow, quietly observing the teeming human masses all around him. As he passed, he could see the fear and curiosity on their faces, feel the hatred emanating from some of the passersby. Russia was one of the countries that had resisted the most—and where the toll of the Great Panic had been the heaviest. With a largely corrupt government and a population distrustful of all authority, many Russians had taken the Krinar invasion as an excuse to loot at will and hoard whatever supplies they could. Even now, more than five years later, some of the storefronts in Moscow were still bare, their taped-over windows a testament to the tumultuous months that had followed their arrival. Thankfully, the air in the city was better now, less polluted than the Krinar remembered it being a few years ago. Back then, a heavy smog hung over the city, irritating him to no end. Not that it could hurt him in any way, but still, the K far preferred breathing air that didn’t contain too many hydrocarbon particles. Approaching the Kremlin, the K pulled the hood of his jacket up over his head and tried to look as human as he could, paying careful attention to his movements to make them slower and less graceful. He didn’t delude himself that the K satellites weren’t watching him at this very moment, but no one in the Centers had any reason to suspect him. He’d made it a point in recent years to travel as much as he could, frequently appearing in major human cities for one reason or another. This way, if anyone cared to profile his behavior, his latest expeditions would not cause any alarm. Not that anyone would bother profiling him. As far as everyone was concerned, those Krinar who’d helped the Resistance—the Keiths, as they’d been called—were safely in custody, and poor Saur had been blamed for erasing their memories. It couldn’t have worked out better if the K had planned it that way himself. No, he didn’t need to conceal his identity from the Krinar eyes in the sky. His goal was to fool the human cameras stationed all around the Kremlin walls—just in case the Russian leaders became alarmed before he had a chance to visit the other major cities. Smiling, the K pretended to be nothing more than a human tourist as he did a leisurely lap around Red Square, the soles of his shoes grinding into the pavement and releasing tiny capsules that contained the seeds of a new era in human history. Once he was done, he headed back to the ship he’d left in one of the nearby alleys. Tomorrow, he would see Mia again. Saret could hardly wait.