I’d been screwing around figuring out whether what had just happened was real or not for far too long. 

If there was one thing that I was sure of it was that, if a major explosion had happened in a park at the heart of a busy city the police would be soon to follow in the wake of said explosion. 

“I can engage active sensors if you wish to watch out for any local law enforcement,” the AI said. 

“We have active sensors?” I replied, “What does that entail?”

I was standing in a super-powerful alien war machine, active sensors might sound innocuous enough but they could also be highly dangerous and damaging to life on Earth. For all I knew they could use some kind of radiation to search things out. 

“Radiation? To search things out?” The AI cut through my thoughts, “That’s one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever heard. No, it’s just a scan of nearby signals. The suit’s active sensors can pick out anything from mundane communication from radios right up to quantum-entangled slip space messages.”

While I didn’t have any clue what ‘slip space messages’ were, that sounded safe enough. 

A ping sounded out from my suit’s helmet, tracing itself across the ground through my visor as a subtle flash of light. 

It went out, further and further, highlighting everything in the nearby area in a kind of transparent ghostly image across my visor’s screen. 

When the flicker of light got to the edge of the park, it finally detected them. A group of armed police officers, each one with some kind of assault rifle or submachine gun in their hands. 

They must have been guarding somewhere important nearby, we didn’t tend to get many armed officers in England. 

If they saw a guy in a liquid metal exo-suit they would assume the worst and likely believe that I was the one who had caused the massive explosion in the park. In that case, the police would likely open fire on me. 

If they saw me without the Exo suit on, they might still assume that I was the one who had caused the explosion. At the very least they would likely take me in for questioning.

 I wasn’t exactly keen for that to happen, either.

Fortunately, there was a copse of trees right here that I could climb up into and hide in until the police finished off their investigations and I could get away without being seen. 

With my now super-powered strength, climbing up a tree was easy enough.

I walked a little way into the treeline until I found a tree with a trunk that was thick enough to withstand being struck by my super-powered fists and scampered up it like a squirrel. 

Sure, squirrels didn’t leave hand-shaped dents in the bark of a tree when they climbed up it, but that was neither here nor there. The fact of the matter was I was out of view further up the tree, occluded by the summertime leaves. 

I was unsure, however, if any of the branches of the tree would be strong enough to hold my metallic form, so as I leapt from the trunk of the tree to a thick looking branch I forced the exo suit to disappear, receding once again to its chilling spot around my heart. 

I hit the branch hard around my midsection and scrabbled to stay on top of it. 

Having a magical technologically advanced exo at my command had done nothing for my sense of balance. 

“Yeah, you are pretty pathetic in that regard,” the AI snarked. 

I had a feeling me and this AI were going to get along just great. 

“Oh, lovely sarcasm there,” the AI bit back, “It’s not exactly a picnic being crammed inside your tiny ape head either, you know.” 

I ignored the insult as I saw flashes of light from torches cut through the flickering flames of the downed spacecraft. 

“Just what in the hell have we got here,” one of the police officers said, drawing closer to the ship. 

“I dunno mate,” another of them replied, “But look, it’s better not to get too close. This thing came down from space they’re saying, could be radioactive or somethin’. Just set up a perimeter, yeah?” 

The first police officer didn’t reply, but I imagined that was just because he was following the advice of his friend and had started to erect a perimeter around the ship to stop any members of the public from drawing close. 

“Oh… Oh no, that’s not good,” The Exo AI muttered in my mind, “That’s not good at all…” 

“What isn’t good?” I hissed under my breath, trying to get a better look at what was going on but only succeeding in almost falling off the branch entirely. 

The AI didn’t have to respond for me to know, instinctively, that something had gone wrong with the spaceship. 

It was like a wave of power had rushed over the area, so strong it caused the trees to sway as if a storm were blowing them around. 

I could also suddenly smell something in the air, like ionization, a faint metallic whiff. 

The thought occurred to me at the same time the AI said, “The ship is about to explode.” 

I reactivated the exo suit. The liquid metal carapace of the suit launched itself out of my skin and wrapped itself around my body once again, closing in tight around me. 

The sudden extra weight on the branch caused it to snap in two, sending me falling back down to the ground. I flailed for a moment in the air before something in the suit took over and allowed me to land perfectly on my feet… at the exact same moment, the ship exploded. 

A fireball at least ten times as big as the one that had occurred when the ship crashed blasted through the area, torching the trees and obliterating everything in its path. 

The only thing left standing in the aftermath… was me.