Chapter 1: Awakening

*siren* *siren* *siren* *siren* *SIREN*

"Starting Operation: Power"

Lights turn on, white lights, like ones in a lab. Covered in dust a figure moves slowly, surely, but stiff and rigid, but slumps back to position. A voice is heard. A robotic voice, feminine in nature.

"Rebooting Operation….. Lacking power",

The white lab lights turn off,

"Priority: turn back on backup power".

Something can be heard in the distance turning on. The lab lights turn back on.

"Backup power online"

Several more lights turn back on. Monitors turn on, images of a figure appears on them. Diagrams, schematics, much more also appear. The room lights up. The room holds plenty of space, some tools on a rack next to the figure. The figure itself is placed on a seat and is connected to by several wires.

"Operation successful…. Rebooting E.L.H"

The figure moves. Faster than it did before, shaking off dust. Two lens flicker and soon a blue lights shines from within it.

"E.L.H successfully rebooted… initiating Operation: Awakening"

A console turns on in the back of the room. Another voice is heard. Masculine in nature and questioning.

"E.L.H are you awake? If you are, come here and connect to this."

Following the orders of the voice, the figure starts to stand up, but is entangled by the wires. It slowly starts to remove the wires. The feminine voice announces.

"Connection removed"

The figure stands up, dropping much of the dust and approaches the console. A man shows up in the console. The man seems to be of Caucasian American descent. He appears relax, but slightly hurried. The background seems to be much the same as the current room, but seems much more active. People can be seen moving about in the background. The figure pulls up a wire from its "hand" and connects it inside the console. The wire itself looks to be a USB but bigger. When connected the man speaks.

"Good, you connected E.L.H. You've been out for quite some time, although that's to be expected. You probably don't know who I am or these people around here since your memory core and main systems was taken out to be used on the U.S.E or the United Spaceship Expedition, but know that we made you. I'm Dr. Henigen and I'm your creator. Around me are my colleagues, Dr. Asakawa and Dr. Greiner."

Several hands appear and then faces appear. A female of Japanese descent and a male of Germanic descent show up. The female waves while the male smiles.

"If there were better circumstances, I would have loved to introduce ourselves in real life, but you'll have to make do with this."

The background of the console gets busier as another person enter the screen and whispers to Dr. Henigen. It is inaudible, but the face of Dr. Henigen distorts to having a worried face.

"We're against time right now so you'll have to learn much of your information from Anna. But I'll quickly run down what's happening and what's you were created to do. Today is the day that humanity leaves Earth. I say that, but it really is just the United States that is leaving, or whoever and whatever that is allowed to leave. We're not leaving on our own accord, but rather that we're forced to. 15 years ago, in the year 2025, a meteorite hit Earth in the Middle East."

A video of the meteorite appears and it hits Earth. Out crawls out small creatures. The video is of low quality and shakes plenty before the recorder runs off.

"The impact was huge and many were lost, but something worst came out of it. We called them the Devours. They were called that because of what they'll do with any living material they found. They're an insectoid hive mind that could completely outmatch our ability to deal with them. At first, we assumed they held no major threat as they were comparably small to our own creatures, but over the course of a single year, they grew out of proportion, in both size and numbers."

An image of a scale size between the first Devours and the latest Devours appear. A 100x size difference.

"Upon touching down with Earth, they spread out their "land" across the impact. We called this "land", the Corruption."

A video of the desert in the Middle East quickly being converted to a white, murky, landscape that seems to be a living organism appears.

"What the "land" did was heavily change the ecosystem and workings of the land to their benefit. It consumed whatever it touched and produced flesh like texture along the floor and within it. The most dangerous aspect of the "gas" it produced. It is actually unsure whether or not it really is a gas or perhaps a living organism that is too small to see since we have no living researcher that has gotten contact with the "gas"."

A video of the "gas" appears. It is transparent, but has a white haze to it. It also moves along with the Corruption.

"In any case, the gas made the Devours bigger, stronger, and faster than when they were first encountered. Any attempts to counter them was pushed back by either force or the gas. This was when the voices of leaving Earth entered our minds. The enemies, too strong to kill, the land, altered, people wanted to leave. So in the Americas where the aliens were far to reach, humanity recovered there. Of course there were plenty who wanted to fight back, but it was near impossible even with our nukes and weaponry."

A map appears with locations of Corruption and mass numbers of Devours and then nukes hitting several locations on Earth, but with little effect on the Corruption.

"The only thing they could do was hold back the Devours for the time being. A lot of research went into 2 things, war potential to push back the aliens and space research to get out of the solar system. So that's what humanity did for the next 15 years to reach today. Today we will leave Earth, or start leaving anyways. That's the "quick" summary of what happened and why you're here. With humanity leaving, we wanted to perhaps come back one day, even if takes millenniums to complete. Earth is our birthplace for our species and we wanted to retake it. Your mission is to complete that in our stead. You can't be converted biomass and as an A.I. you are immortal. Where we failed, you will succeed. You will fight, you will rebuild, and you will retake Earth."