*Dr Steins pov*
(1945 world war II)
I heard the first bomb as we were in the bunker, bullets could be heard from above and after a while everything ceased.
The general followed the protocols and did not open the bunker until after 2 hours, as he opened it a sharp scream was heard and he was struck dead by a bullet, continuous gunshots and screams were heard as we were being moved from the tunnels but suddenly we were surrounded and our leading commander was killed off along with all the other scientists.
I was spared as the leading scientist and was hurled off as the rigged the place to blow.
*2 YEARS AGO*
I was twenty when the letter came.
A thin, folded page bearing the government's seal — the kind of paper that smells of importance and fear. They said the world had changed overnight. An object from the heavens had fallen somewhere in the northern plains, leaving behind a crater that glowed for three days. They needed "the brightest young minds in biological chemistry." Somehow, that meant me.
I remember the train ride to the facility — endless snowfields, telephone poles flashing past like clock hands marking the seconds of a new era. I was too young to be afraid. The others on the team were older. I was the only one who still believed science could save the world.
When I first saw the asteroid, I forgot how to speak. It wasn't just a rock — it was something else , built like a living technology. I speculated right away that it must be techno-organic in nature.
Our days became nights, and our nights became something else entirely. We tested, cataloged, and dissected the impossible. The rock secreted a liquid that restored dead cells. It could integrate perfectly with our technologies. Made it better and seemed to alter the biological makeup of living organisms.
By the end of that first month, we stopped calling it "the specimen." We called it The Arkon.
I can still hear the laughter from that first week, the sound of discovery before it turned to paranoia. We believed we were unlocking evolution. The truth was that something was unlocking us.
If I had known what that stone would become — what it would make us do — I would have burned my invitation before I ever boarded that train.
But I was twenty.
And twenty-year-olds don't burn history, the make it.