Origins

The bottom line was: we didn’t know enough yet. Finding those Black Files had opened a Pandora’s Box of questions when we expected answers. We knew the Voice was coming from Ragnarok Crater in a series of low- frequency sound waves, and that the xenofungus transmitted these waves, communicating with all life-forms under its spell. Anything infected with the xenovirus would listen to the Voice’s directives. All xenolife behaved as if of one mind. Something was controlling it. If we killed that something, it could spell the end of the invasion.

Well, this part of the invasion, anyway. The Black Files stated the Xenos were still coming — I assumed on some sort of ship — or maybe a whole interstellar armada. When they arrived, they were probably expecting to have a planet tailor-made for them, covered with the Blights and all resistance dead. Assuming we did kill off the Voice, we still had to deal with Xenofall. We didn’t know when Xenofall was coming. It could be tomorrow, one year, or ten years or more from now. We might even all be dead by the time Xenofall happened.

Samuel kept telling me to take it one step at a time, so that was what I was trying to do. The first step was preparing myself as much as possible — not just getting my strength back, but getting stronger besides. I ran along the Outer Ring an hour each day. I was improving my speed. I had sprinted more in the past few months than at any other point in my life. I did pushups, pull-ups, and crunches in addition to my martial training with Samuel and Anna. I wanted to be ready for anything.

By the end of the day, I was so tired that I usually fell right asleep. There were times, though, when I couldn’t turn off my brain. So much had happened that it was impossible to process. I was constantly stressed. I suffered nightmares. I dreamt of Khloe, buried alive in the dry, red sand. I dreamt of the night when it all went to hell. And the monsters were always there, surrounding me, chasing me over bleak plains and jagged mountains.

The Blights were growing, festering like open sores on the surface. When I looked down at Earth, I could see the Blights when the blood-red clouds weren’t so thick. They were only in North America, but according to Ashton and Samuel, that would change over the next ten years. The planet looked sick, for lack of a better word. It was as if it were a living thing being poisoned from the inside out.

Then there was the rest of the world, too. The entire planet was depopulated to the same extent as America — or worse. Ashton called the ten years following Ragnarok the Chaos Years — a time when the world’s population dropped from 8.4 billion to mere millions. In China, city-states and proto-empires fought amongst the ruins of civilization. In Europe, extreme cold had completely hampered population regrowth. In equatorial regions, people were faring little better. War over limited resources still consumed most of the world. Wars would exist as long as there were enough people to fight them.

None of these people knew about the xenovirus or Xenofall, and trying to communicate that through language barriers seemed impossible. In his first years in Skyhome, Ashton had visited different parts of the world — China, India, Russia, Japan, Africa — but always found one of two things: either no one had survived, or there were so many survivors fighting that making contact was too dangerous. Maybe the Chaos Years ended in 2040 for the United States, but the rest of the world was still living them.

If we didn’t succeed in stopping the xenovirus, all of humanity was as good as dead — and not just humanity, but every life-form that had managed to evolve in our planet’s tumultuous, 4.6 billion-year history. As unimaginable as that length of time was, I knew Earth had never experienced anything like this. A new form of life had invaded. When I left Bunker 108, I never imagined something like the xenovirus could exist. All I wanted was a community to live in, another Bunker, somewhere to be safe.

Well, I had found my community; but now, we were the ones trying to keep the world safe.

* * *

“Hold still.”

Anna grabbed my hands, giving me a stern expression. She twisted my clenched fists roughly on the hilt of her katana, forcing them vertical.

“Keep your grip loose, yet firm.”

I tried to do what she told me. I looked into her hazel eyes, which she promptly rolled.

“Stop looking at me and focus. Make your mind blank. I imagine a black plane, a void. Have you been practicing that?”

“Yes,” I lied.

“No, you haven’t. I can tell.” She sighed. “That’s the most important part.”

“Where did you get this void thing, anyway?”

“I don’t know. I made it up, but it works.”

I smiled, holding the katana as steady as I could. “So when do I get to swing this thing?”

Anna raised an eyebrow. “Would you quit being perverted and pay attention for once?”

“I’m trying.”

She sighed again, but it was forced. The beginnings of a smile played on her lips.

“Seriously. You need to practice meditating. Once you get the hang of it, you can make your mind completely blank. I always do it before a fight. It helps my concentration.” She looked at me. “Do you understand?”

“Yeah. Makes sense.”

“Good. You really need to practice it. I can’t stress that enough.” She looked at my arm, touching my left biceps. “You’re getting stronger. You’ve been working out still?”

“Yeah, of course. I didn’t realize you were such a fan.”

“I’m just commenting on your physique,” she said. Despite this comment, her face flushed slightly red. “I can actually see you when you stand sideways. You were so rail-thin before.”

“Ouch.” I set her katana gently on her bed. “My ‘physique,’ huh?”

She ignored my comment. “When you go to your hab today, I want you to do the mediation. I mean it.”

“Alright. I get it.” I turned for the door. “I’m going to grab dinner, if you want to come.”

She shook her head. “I still need to practice myself. Thanks, though.”

“You’ve already practiced this morning.”

“I practice twice a day. If you can wait a couple hours…maybe. We’ll see.”

My stomach growled in protest. Between my hunger and her playing hard to get, I think my stomach was going to win. “No, I probably can’t wait that long. So you want to meet at the same time tomorrow?”

Anna took up her blade, staring intently ahead. “Works for me.”

I left her room and made my way back to my hab. After two months in Skyhome, I finally got the chance to see Anna a little more. Nothing had happened between us. At least, not yet. Even if I thought I was picking up some flirtatious vibes from her, it always looked as if she was doing her best to suppress them. Which made sense; after all, we were all here for the mission. But when you spend a lot of time with someone, you can’t help but think about them.

So far, Anna had only agreed to help train me to use the katana. I wanted a backup, in case I somehow couldn’t use my gun, but I think we both knew that I was just using training as an excuse to get to know her. I had learned a lot, but I was still a long way from being even semi-competent. All the same, I appreciated everything I was learning, and it was nice to see her.

Still, after two months, I was hoping that things could have progressed a little more with Anna. And I wasn’t just crazy. After all, it was my hand she decided to grab down there on Earth, when the crawlers had been coming for us on the runway, and it was me she had snuggled with on the plane. And the way she looked at me sometimes, when she thought I wasn’t looking…well, let’s just say there had to be something there.

Hopefully, the right opportunity would present itself.

* * *

Back in my hab, I practiced the meditation Anna taught me. I was failing miserably. No matter how much I tried, my thoughts kept spinning out of control. I’ve always been a sufferer of the disease known as “thinking too much.”

I was grateful when a knock came at the door. Hoping it was Anna, I went to answer. I pressed the exit button, causing the metal door to slide open. I couldn’t help but be slightly disappointed when it was Samuel, standing in his characteristic muscle shirt and camo pants. His head, as usual, was shaved bald, and his facial