Kidman sighed and lit another cigarette. She took a deep breath and exhaled it in Jack's face. Jack gave an annoyed cough, but didn't take his eyes off her.

"So?" Jack asked. "What is the Doomsday Strand?"

Kidman turned towards the monitor showing the DNA sequence she had collected from Lillian, then back towards Jack. There was a look of pain in her face.

"You look like you were a dinosaur kid growing up. I know my boy was." Kidman said. She chuckled at some funny memory, then returned to her worried expression. "Do you know how they were wiped out?"

"Big asteroid."

"Yes. But it wasn't just some random asteroid flying through the unieverse that happened to hit Earth. No. It was sent here on purpose, by the Nephilim."

"Giants?"

"Hm. You know your stuff. They're not the same giants as the ones mentioned in the bible though. The Nephilim were an ancient race of advanced beings that used to rule the universe. Our observable universe, anyway. They watched over Earth for millions of years, making sure no species would be capable of rising up against them in the future. The Nephilim saw a threat in the dinosaurs. They predicted those big, dumb lizards would eventually turn into smaller, smarter lizards. So they wiped the dinosaurs out with a giant rock."

"What about human kind? Aren't we a threat to them?"

"The Nephilim saw something in us, a potential to become an intelligent, peaceful race and one day join them in interstellar expansion. So in ancient times, the Nephilim came to Earth and instructed us. The pyramids, complex tools, and all those ancient tales of people descending from the heavens to help mankind, all that came from our interaction with the Nephilim."

"So the ancient astronaut theory is real..."

"Crazy, right? All that bullshit you see on TV about aliens in our past. It's all true. Aliens came to help us, but that didn't mean they trusted us completely. Far from it. The more time the Nephilim spent on Earth, the more they worried about mankind's future. They saw how violent we were, killing ourseleves and starting wars over nothing, so they decided to do something about it. This time, they wanted something more sutble than a giant rock, so over the course of a few hundred years, the Nephilim mingled with our DNA to include a gene capable of shutting us down. A self destruct gene, if you will."

"That didn't work. I mean, we're still here, aren't we?" Jack pointed out.

"Yes, we are."

Kidman put out her cigarette and walked towards the operating table. She lay a hand on Lillian's forehead, and feeling that it was too warm, injected more medicine into her arm. 

"Agent Black." Kidman called. "Mind telling our friend the rest of the story?"

"Erm, okay." Hunter said awkwardly. "Well, let's see. You know what evolution is, right?"

"Yeah..." Jack anwered, doubting Hunter's intelligence for a moment.

"Well, then you know how things can evolve over time. Giraffes grew long necks to eat leaves from trees. Chameleons developed the ability to change colors to hide from predators."

"You are grossly oversimplifying the concept of evolution." Kidman said with a chuckle. "But that's not important right now. Go on."

Hunter blushed. He hated it when people mocked his knowledge.

"Just like animals, people evolve too." Hunter continued. "Some people are starting to be born without wisdom teeth, because we don't use them anymore. Same thing with our appendix. Some people are starting be born without them."

"Okay." Jack said. "So what's your point?"

"His point." Kidman cut in. "Is that our DNA is constantly changing, mutating, evolving. Gaining new organs, dropping others. This process happens over the course of millions of years. But what hasn't changed is the prescene of the Doomsday Strand in our genetic. In fact, the Doomsay Strand is expanding. We estimate that if it's evolution keeps going in the same rate in which it is today, the Strand will take effect in two thousand years, give or take."

"And what happens then?"

"In theory, the entire human race will be wiped out, although I'm confident that by then the human race will have the knowledge and technology to remove the Strand from our DNA. Time was on our side, until the Compadians entered the picture. They found a way to speed up the evolution of the Doomsday Strand in your girlfriend, and if they find a way to repeat the process and viralize the compound that triggers it, we could be looking at the extinction of the entire human race in the next few months."

"So you're saying there's nothing we can do about this? Nothing we can do to help Lillian?"

"Not that I know of."

Jack felt something crush within up. The hope that he had for Lillian's recovery was gone, and in it's place, came the feeling of impending doom.

"Why would they do this to her?? To us!?"

"Compadians are dicks." Hunter said. "They think of themselves as the spiritual successors of the Nephilim. It makes sense if you take into account that both species hate mankind. Actually, the Compadians hate us more."

"You said the Nephilim wipe out all species that are threats to them." Jack said to Kidman. "So why haven't they wiped out the Compadians?"

"Because the Nephilim disppeared thousands of years ago. They vanished from the universe, and no one has seen them since."

"Acutally..." Hunter interrupted. "Someone has seen them since."

"Bullshit." Kidman said. "People who claim they've seen the Nephilim were either high or having hallucinations. Usually both."

Hunter ignored Kidman and turned towards Jack.

"Do you remember the story I told you about my aunt's abduction?" He asked.

Jack nodded.

"She was abducted by the Nephilim."

"A creature that was tall..." Jack recalled.

"That's insane!" Kidman cried out. "How long ago was this?"

"I was a kid." Hunter said.

"A kid! Everything seems tall to you when you're a kid."

"The thing was tall. I swear to God, it had to bend down when it went through the door."

"It could have been a reptile, a shapeshifter. It could have been some other species we don't know about yet."

"Kidman, I saw the thing against the light. It's skin was translusive, I could see the crystal underneath."

"Crystal?" Jack questioned.

"Yes. The Nephilim's bones were made of crystal. My aunt spent a long time studying what remained of their culture. She wanted to speak to them about The Elders."

Kidman rolled her eyes. "Oh please, The Elders? Now I'm sure you and your aunt were just suffering delusions."

"The Agency came to our house that night." Hunter continued. "They confirmed what I saw. They even took pictures of a Nephilim ship entering the upper atmosphere. The descriptions of the ship matched the ones described in legend. It was them."

"I don't get it. Why would The Agency keep this from us?"

"I don't know. It's the reason why I owe them a debt. I was too valuable for them to kill. It's not everyday that they find a living witness of a Nephilim encounter, so they kept me around as a debtor instead."

Kidman took a steat on a metal stool next to the operating table. She was visibly shaken from what she had just learned. 

"If the Nephilim are still out there," Kidman started. "Then what the hell are they doing letting the Compadians mess around the way that they do?"

"Beats me. There are so many questions that I try not to think about. I catch myself thinking about how my aunt contacted them, and why they took her."

"Did she leave behind any evidence?"

"No. The Agency took every scrap of paper in her room. They're the only ones who know anything about this between us three now." Hunter pointed to himself, Kidman and Jack. "And if they never told anyone else about it until now, it's likely they never will."

"An Agency secret can only mean bad news." Kidman said as she lit yet another cigarette. "What I wouldn't give to know more about this..."

"You could, if you stormed The Agency and made someone talk."

"Ha! I bet it'd be eaiser to find the Nephilim and talk to them."

An awkward silence fell upon the room, with nobody really knowing what to say. All of a sudden, the silence was broken by a chilling laugh. The laugh came from Lillian, who was lying on the operating table with her eyes open. She sat up slowly in a very unnatural manner, like a corpse rising from it's grave. Her eyes were distant, looking straight ahead while looking at nothing at all. The smile gave as she rose was spine chilling, leaving the others in shock.

"There is no way for you to interfere." Lillian spoke in a manner and tone that did not belong to her. "The Nephilim are gone from the cosmos, they belong to us now. And soon, so will your world. There is nothing you or your meddling Agency can do to stop us."

"It's a transponder device." Hunter said in alarm.

"I got it." Kidman said, rushing to her tool shelf. She grabbed a defibrillator and set it down on the same operating table Lillian was on. Lillian, or the thing that controlled her, did not react in any way. She kept staring at nothing.

"The body we control will pass away soon, and in time, so will humanity.  You thought of us as weak, but we are in fact the strongest of the humanoids. After Humanity falls, we will conquer other worlds, and the universe will be as one again."

Jack, who had been in quiet shock the entire time, fainted and hit the floor with a thud.

"Make her shut up already!" Hunter shouted. "Fry the damn chip!"

Kidman switched on the defibrillator and held the electrodes close to the base of Lillian's skull.

"Clear!"

The electric current traveled all through out Lillian's body, and when it was over, she slumped back into her lying position on the operating table. Kidman could sense the faint smell of fried electronics coming from her.

"Those bastards were listening to us." Kidman said as she put away the defibrillator. "They're getting a little too bold for my taste."

A light in the sky shone through the attic's only window, blinding Hunter and Kidman for a second. When it had passed, Hunter ran to the window and searched for the source of of the light.

"Shit." Hunter cursed. "We've got company. A Compadian ship, right above us."