By the time June started, Ilian had still been spending almost all his time at the computer. He was still determined to learn everything he could about the dying planet they were now inhabiting, as well as the dying race that used to populate it. It may have seemed a strange thing to do now that both were coming to an inevitable end, but he still felt the need to at least try and understand the two that would be spending the rest of their lifespan there in that place with him.

But even that way of passing his time seemed to be coming to an end that afternoon. “Do you know how to fix this?” Ilian asked Adan and Aura. The two were sitting together in front of the TV in that continued attempt to distract themselves from having the time to really think about how their world had now changed.

“Fix what?” Adan asked as they looked back at Ilian’s question.

“This site cannot be reached. Please check your internet connection” Ilian read out the message that greeted him at every site he tried to access now.

Adan and Aura both looked down with a somber expression. Aura could already feel her breath getting shorter. “It seems like the internet finally quit working now too” Adan made himself supply that answer, giving Aura a comforting squeeze with the arm that had been wrapped around her shoulders already.

“Quit?” Ilian asked with a moment of his own worry. After all, the computer was the one way he had to try and make sense of a completely new world himself, other than just constantly asking the two of them to talk about all they had now lost.

“If the worldwide servers go down, and there’s no one left to fix them...” Adan just let his voice trail off as he felt Aura trying her best to force back a sob.

“Then the world really is over” she finished in a raspy whisper.

Ilian swallowed as he looked back at the computer, then at them, then back again. He began clicking on anything else he could to try and disprove that possibility. But it seemed it may have been true after all. That was when he clicked on the icon that brought up the camera feeds from outside. And then his breath caught too.

“I was wrong” he spoke, more to himself.

“What was that?” Adan said, still trying to help Aura fight back her anxiety attack, and not quite catching Ilian’s statement.

“Nothing” Ilian answered as he quickly clicked away the window, and sat back in the seat, now having adopted Adan’s mannerism of running a hand through his long locks in a sure sign of stress.

Looking back at Ilian again in time to see how quickly he had closed the window on the computer and how obviously upset he suddenly seemed, Adan gave Aura another small squeeze and rose from his seat. “What is it?” he asked Ilian again as he took a step toward the computer.

As Adan moved closer, he noted that the feed from the cameras was only minimized, not closed, and reached past Ilian to call up the window once more. He shook his head and looked back at Ilian, then back at the monitors.

“What even is that?” Adan asked Ilian as he pointed to the screen, where off in the distance of each feed, could be seen large specks of bright blue in the forest outside.

Ilian tried to think of any answer at all he could give, but he knew that the truth would be his only option, painful as it was sure to be. “That’s a type of vegetation, a fungus really, that is from my planet” he spoke the last two words under his breath.

“What?” Adan asked as he looked back at him.

“They’re Terra-forming you mean?” Aura spoke up as well, moving to also view the monitor.

“Why would they do that if they’re...” Adan began, but then his voice trailed off, as they all already knew the way that sentence ended.

“They’re not leaving after all?” Aura choked on the statement.

“You said they were going to take everything and then just move on” Adan reminded Ilian loudly.

“That had been their plan, when I left” Ilian assured.

Adan and Aura both took a deep breath, as Ilian continued to look down at the floor. “Why would their plan have changed?” Adan made himself ask.

Ilian took a moment before supplying the only answer he could. “The reason your planet was dying is because there were too many of you.”

“And now there’s not” Adan made himself add.

“There won’t be” Ilian stated quietly.

“Excuse me?” Adan asked defensively.

“The firefights have stopped. We haven’t heard any fighting out there for weeks. But no matter how superior we were, technologically speaking, there was still one advantage your kind had” Ilian attempted to explain.

“And that would be?” Aura made herself ask.

“There was a lot more of you than us” Ilian admitted. “I told you about how we reproduce. It’s all planned and only happens when we want it to. It’s how we made our own planet last so long. But our planet was much smaller than yours, and eventually all our resources were dwindling too. So we stopped reproducing and started searching.

“Your planet is enormous, and you were all still destroying it. It was all going to be gone. So, our leaders decided that one thing could solve our problems and yours. So we came here. We sent the virus. We waited.

“Then the attacks started, and now they’ve stopped. But there’s no way that all your people could have been killed in those attacks. Your numbers are too great, and your places to truly hide from the fighting too vast. So either we would have to accept only a partial victory, or a war that could last for decades, costing our kind even more than yours. Or...” Ilian just shook his head and looked down again.

“Or what?” Adan made himself ask.

“Find another way to wipe out the rest of you, without costing us anything” Ilian made himself finish.

“And what way’s that?” Aura forced the question from her lips.

Ilian just gestured to the computer screen. “Those plants release spores. My people won’t have to do anything at all to win now. You’ll all be gone, and all of your resources on this enormous planet will be left completely untouched. But the air itself will no longer be safe for any of you anymore. Your people can’t hide from air, not unless they’re in a place like this bunker. And even then, whatever they have left to sustain them, it will eventually run out too.”

“So, there really isn’t any hope that they’ll eventually leave and we can have what’s left of our planet back again?” Adan whispered as Aura tried to hold back tears, each of them gripping the other’s hand tightly.

Ilian was quiet a long moment, trying to come up with anything at all that could give either of them any remaining hope. “I mean, there is one thing. But...” he shook his head sadly.

“What thing?” Adan asked.

“I wasn’t sure I’d be able to get away from my own people. But I was a scientist and a healer, so I took one thing with me, in case they caught me before I could find a place to hide from them.”

“Care to be more specific?” Adan pressed.

“I guess, the only equivalent I can come up with that would make any sense would be like a cyanide pill, but more like a cyanide bomb. Them catching me, a traitor? That would be worse than death for me. So, I figured that if they ever did, I’d end it myself. But take my captors with me at least” Ilian stated with another shaky breath.

“What does that even mean, Ilian?” Aura asked.

“I do have one thing that could kill my own people. The same way they’re trying to kill yours. But...” he looked down again.

“But it’d kill you too?” Aura whispered, causing her and Adan to both give him a look of despair.

“It’s the precursor to those blue plants you see outside. They were engineered. But there was another strain before that. And it was toxic to us, deadly. A lot of lives were lost before we found the right combination to make the ones you see out there now. But the seeds from the first strain, they were locked away. Destroying them would have just released the toxins into our air. So I took them” he admitted with a shaky breath.

“There’s some toxic plant in here with us?” Adan asked loudly.

“It’s contained” Ilian assured. “If it wasn’t, I’d be dead right now. But more importantly” he continued quickly, “there’s nothing in it that would be toxic to humans. Only us” he added in a whisper.

Adan spoke up then, “so... we just what? Un-contain the seeds if they ever find us? They die, you die. But we get to live in here just until our resources run out anyway? But we can still never go outside again? How is that really a long term fix?”

“If we planted some around the place. It would eventually release gas, spores, spread. But they’d never be able to get anywhere near here. And if we could get it into a water supply, it could actually poison them, and make all your resources unusable for them.

“The seeds I have, the dark strain. They produce black mushrooms instead of the blue. And they’re much heartier. That’s why we couldn’t destroy the seeds without endangering ourselves. The blue ones out there now are weaker. They take longer and die faster. They need to be replanted regularly. If we can introduce the black ones into your Eco-system, they would eventually overtake the blue. Poisoning this whole planet for them the way they’re now trying to poison it for the rest of your people.”

“But if the kind out there now are toxic to us” Aura spoke after a moment, “and the ones that we’d need to take outside to counteract those are toxic to you...”

“There’s no way we can do it, without one of us dying, anyway” Adan finished sadly, managing to put it together in his head, and causing them all to look down in somber thought.