Origins

“That was not my station,” Samuel said. “Someone’s updated this to recognize my name. Or maybe the computers at Bunker 114 recorded the deaths of the scientists there, so it automatically gives me clearance to these files.”

“Congrats on your promotion,” I said.

Makara remained silent, her face like stone.

They were on the screen: the Black Files we had all been waiting for.

“They are only eighty pages long,” Samuel said, with a frown. “I was expecting more. Much more.”

“You sound disappointed,” I said.

Samuel shrugged. “Just not what I expected at all. Then again, a lot can sometimes be said with a little, but that’s typically not the case with research papers.”

“Read it,” Anna said. “This is what we’re here for. Let’s see how to beat this thing.”

Samuel sighed. “Alright. Reading.”

Samuel scanned the pages furiously. He showed no reaction as we waited. Occasionally, he mouthed something to himself. At the end of ten minutes his face darkened.

“What is it?” I asked.

Samuel held up a hand. As he read, his expression became more and more disturbed.

“What’s going on?” Anna asked.

“Did you finish reading?” I asked.

Samuel nodded. “Yeah. You’re not going to believe where the xenovirus came from. Well, maybe you will, because I suspected it all along. But you will definitely not know why it’s here.”

“Well,” Makara said. “We have time. Tell us what you found out.”

* * *

“As I suspected,” Samuel said, “the xenovirus is not of Earth origin. Looking at the flora and fauna it creates should be enough indication of that.”

“It was inside Ragnarok, wasn’t it?” I asked.

Samuel nodded. “Yes. That’s the only way it could have come. In the Old World, NASA did experiments on how long bacteria and viruses could last in the vacuum of space. In some cases, it might be years or longer. The xenovirus was inside Ragnarok, and the rock protected it from the cold vacuum of space. That’s not all, though.”

“What else is there?”

Samuel sighed. “A lot.”

He paused a moment, as if collecting his thoughts. I had a feeling we were about to get a huge dose of information.

“Are you familiar with the Guardian Missions?” Samuel asked.

It sounded familiar, but it was a moment before the memory returned to me.

“There were three,” I said. “They were the world’s attempt to stop Ragnarok from destroying Earth. All of them failed.”

“That’s right,” Samuel said. “Each Guardian Mission had a name, also the name of the ship launched. The first, called the Archangel, was launched in 2024. It reached Ragnarok after a flight of six months. The story is that something went wrong with the landing gear, which caused the ship to crash.”

“Okay,” I said. “So what really happened?”

“There’s only a few paragraphs of it in here,” Samuel said. “But apparently it was something else. The ship landed fine. They were even able to install the rockets on the surface. But they were attacked.”

We looked at each other.

“Wait,” Makara said. “I can understand viruses and microbes surviving. But attacked? Anything capable of harming a person couldn’t withstand space. It’s impossible.”

“Whatever it was, it wasn’t built like we are. There are pictures, even. One of the astronauts managed to get a photo but it didn’t turn out well. You can only see a worm-like creature.”

We crowded around the computer. Indeed, there was a picture of something, probably living.

“Creepy,” Makara said.

“Looks like a crawler,” I said. “The shot is blurry.”

“Information about the attack was held back in order to prevent panic. Another mission was planned, with more people. This one was called Reckoning.”

“I always did think that name sounded funny,” I said.

“They sent soldiers with this one, along with the crew. They had guns. Only this mission never made it to the asteroid in the first place. The story was that it was lost en route, and that one appears to be true, if what I read here is correct. Perhaps hit by a stray piece of rock or debris, or something wrong with the engine or hull.”

“No reckoning, then.”

“No,” Samuel said. “There was the last mission in 2028. The one that appeared to succeed, but didn’t. The Messiah mission.”

We all waited for Samuel to go on.

“Messiah made it to Ragnarok, and landed without a hitch. The rockets were attached to Ragnarok. Like the Archangel mission, it seemed to work. When the crawlers or whatever they were came, they were driven back. Eventually, the astronauts were overwhelmed — but not before the rockets began to go off, doing their job in pushing Ragnarok off course.”

“Why didn’t it work?”

“Because the rockets needed a full week to do their job effectively. The astronauts did all they could — but they fell, one by one, to endless waves of attackers. Whatever was on the asteroid, it had planned on being able to defend it.”

“Defend it?” Anna asked. “Why? Did it want to attack us?”

Samuel nodded. “Yes. After this mission failed, the government said that they thought the mission was a success, but for reasons unknown, it didn’t work. From the Files, we know why. Ragnarok was pushed off course, but not by much. Not by enough.”

A horrible dread twisted my gut. I knew all this happened thirty years ago, but it was hard not to imagine how everyone must have felt as these missions failed, one by one.

“The Bunker Program began immediately in 2020, the beginning of what came to be called the Dark Decade. Ragnarok was to hit Earth on December 3, 2030 — Dark Day. The Bunkers were never meant to be a reality. They were only a fail-safe. The government believed that if Ragnarok did impact Earth, they needed enough people underground to come up and rebuild once it was all over. The key to this was making well-trained soldiers of all underground U.S. citizens. The Bunkers altogether, assuming no losses, had enough space to hold close to 60,000 people. Given they were all well-trained, that’s still a sizeable force for an army. But as we all know, that wasn’t to last. The world became much darker than anyone expected. Things broke down. As far as we know, there are only two Bunkers. Maybe even they are gone.”

“How come Ragnarok took so long to detect?” I asked. “You’d think they would have found it much earlier than they did.”

“In the Old World, NASA funded the NEO Program — the Near Earth Object Program, designed to do just that. Asteroids the size of Ragnarok or larger were all accounted for, but Ragnarok went rogue, somehow. It changed course in what seemed to be an impossible manner. No one knows exactly when this occurred, but it took a while before people noticed. To this day, no one knows how it was done. But we know why it was done.”

“Why?” I asked, dreading the answer. “Why did it change course?”

“Don’t you see?” Samuel asked. “We’re being invaded.”

Chapter 21

“Aliens?” Anna asked. “Real-life aliens? I can buy a virus. That makes sense. That is clear…”