It would be a lie if someone said we never meant to make contact with them. Not that there were any survivors that would waste their breath to.

   My breath left my lips in a small cloud. I lifted my eyes to the heavens and squinted at a bright sun surrounded by beautiful white clouds. I blinked and the scene shifted to the horrible reality of the present. The sun hung low in the sky, smaller than it once was before life took an apocalyptic turn. If Earth had fallen any further from the Sun than it did, the planet would have become completely uninhabitable. The planet was barely able to sustain life anymore. Temperatures dropped drastically- most of the world was frozen over.

  I continued walking, ignoring the icy winds, and remembered what I'd come for. My footsteps ceased when I reached the end of the desolate street. There, a few feet away, was the only house that still stood in the barren wasteland of ice. I shook my head and clicked my tongue. Of course.

   I entered the home, small ice crystals crunching under my boots and floorboards silently protesting under my weight. Ice encased the walls and picture frames that hung from them. I wiped a nearby frame with my sleeve and peered at the photograph. Dr. Kronin, his wife Sarah, and their young daughter smiled at me. They were right. They told me I would find a clue to their whereabouts here. 

   In no way did Dr. Kronin play a part in the communication with HD 164595, their galaxy's power source, but he'd committed an unforgivable crime when he followed all he'd been instructed to do. He was a hated man. Recognizing this, he was intelligent enough to take his family and go into hiding.

Instinctively, I knew that the Kronins were the last ones on Earth, apart from me.

   What ran through my veins told me so.

     I continued treading deeper into the vacant home. After quickly scouring the living space, I came upon a hallway. Dim sunlight spilled from an open door at the end of the corridor. I curiously cocked my head to the side. It was the only open door. I tried the knob on the door beside me. It didn't budge. It was either locked, or frozen shut.

   My eyes trailed downwards and fixated on the strange shadow that splayed across the floor from the open room. I cautiously continued my stride, firmly placing one foot in front of the other, and reached behind the waistband of my jeans. My fingers curled around the loaded python. Six remained of the eight-bullet round. As I did this quick calculation in my head, my thumb automatically located the gun's hammer, ready to push it down and fire at any given moment.

   I silently stepped into the light of the room, steadily aiming the python in front of me and froze when I realized what stood before me. Casting a quick glance around the rest of the room, I relaxed my arms and once again tucked the Python at the back of my waistband. My attention returned to the cylinder glass tank in the middle of the room. Memories of the Immortals came into mind. It had to be one of them. Before I could overthink it, I snatched my gun from behind me, pushed down the hammer, and pulled the trigger.

    My ears rung for a moment. A faint trail of smoke left the barrel. The glass tank suffered a mere fracture. I traced my fingers along the cracks. They weren't deep enough to break the tank. I stepped back once more, pushed down the hammer, and brought my eyes level with the gun's front and rear sights.

CRACK!

The second bullet pushed the first further into the glass. It would be enough. The gun's silencer sizzled for a moment as I pushed it into a small pile of snow. I ignored the cold touch of the metal against my lower back when I returned the gun to my waistband.

   I walked over to the large desk near the window. There sat a paperweight that caught my eye. I tested its weight and threw it against the fractures in the glass tank. Moments later, a male body fell onto the floor along with a gush of luminescent green liquid.

    I calmly walked to the body and took the slick wrist in my hands, searching for a pulse. Green mucus covered every inch of his skin. Ink black numbers tainted his forearm. 37000000. There was no pulse. I dropped his hand in disgust and wiped my hands on my jeans.

He was the last one. The last Immortal to be created.

  I put some distance between the corpse and me, moving back towards the desk. My attention diverted itself to the files on the wooden surface. I briefly scanned through them. This was Dr. Kronin's office. I recognized his spidery handwriting. Number 37,000,000 was the last Immortal demanded of Kronin by the monsters that invaded our planet.

  I vaguely remembered the arrival of the Type III civilization. They called themselves a master race, a species of galactic travelers with knowledge of everything related to energy. We called them "Masters" for short.

    The fact that we humans had been able to answer to their frequency, the HD 164595, made Earth their target. In their eyes, we were a growing threat to be exterminated before its presence grew stronger. Though they played a significant role in the apocalypse, Masters weren't directly responsible for the destruction of humanity. They killed off more than half of the human population and made monsters of select survivors. Those chosen by them were experimented on. Microbots capable of cell regeneration were implanted into their bodies and they never aged again.

   The human race could have survived. Humans could have re-created what had been lost, repopulated, established a new culture, a new language, a new way of life. Humanity would not have been doomed had it not been for its nature of greed for wealth and power.

   The newly created thirty-seven million Immortals lost all sense of reason and killed one another while the rest of humanity's survivors did what they could to prevent being caught in the crossfire. The Masters watched, sparing only the Kronins, who helped in the mass creation of the Immortals.

   Humans became pawns in a game they invented for themselves. Witnessing our betrayal, lies, corruption, war, plague, and famine was their new entertainment.

   I shuddered and shook myself from my thoughts. All Immortals were dead. Except for one. I had to find Dr. Kronin.

  I spent the next hour searching through the files at the desk, looking for a clue as to where the Kronin family could have fled.

   I sighed in frustration and threw a manilla folder down onto the desk. But I couldn't give up. I'd come so far. My goal was within my reach. The Kronins were within my reach.

   I glanced down beside the desk and smiled. Inside the trash bin lay a folder curled at the edges. I picked it up and flipped it open. The corners of my mouth curved higher on my face.

       I knew where they were.

  I was prepared to travel to the other side of the Earth to find them. Never would I have thought that the Kronin family was beneath the soles of my worn boots. Five minutes later, I punched in the passcode of the Kronins' bunker door and pulled it open. Music reached my ears. I jumped down to the bottom of the bunker, softly humming along with the tune I faintly remembered. Dr. Kronin and Sarah's laughter emanated from deeper within the bunker. "Millie!" Sarah called out. "Come here, sweetie!"

    I walked in the direction of the voice.

   "Yes, Mom?" an adolescent girl's voice replied to Sarah's call. "Your father and I have great news! We had a talk, and we know how much you dislike the bunker... so we've decided to return to the surface. We'll go to a warmer place, to a house your father has prepared for us."

     "Really?" Millie squealed with excitement.

  The equator. Dr. Kronin meant to run to the warmest place on the planet.

           As if I would let them go.

   I stepped away from the shadowed wall and into the open space where the Kronin family stood. Millie's brown eyes widened in fright from her place at the kitchen table, and Sarah's sharp intake of breath was deafening in the stunned silence. Beside Sarah, Dr. Kronin stood very, very still.

  I smiled and reached behind me. "Hello, Dr. Kronin." The doctor's breathing became irregular. Sharp, quick breaths heaved from his chest.

    "One," he breathed out.

       The microbots under my skin reacted sporadically to the name.

   "Please, One. Not my family-"

  My arm rose in Millie's direction and my finger pulled the trigger.

  Sarah screamed out in horror. Three, I counted down in my mind.

"MILLIE!" Dr. Kronin shouted, voice cracking. The sound of the girl's body hitting the floor resonated in the empty space. My thumb pushed down the hammer and the next bullet clicked into place. I aimed the python at Sarah, and pulled the trigger. Her corpse dropped to the floor.

Two.

Dr. Kronin fell to his knees, sobbing into his palms.

    I stepped forward and pulled down the hammer, resting the silencer against the doctor's forehead.

I sighed. "I told you I would come for you, didn't I?"

    Dr. Kronin's pitiful sobs caught in his throat as he raised his head to stare into my eyes.

I pulled the trigger and he collapsed onto the floor.

One. I turned away, tucked the gun in my waistband, and climbed out of the bunker. The wind settled, and the sun had begun to set. I walked around the house, into the frozen barrenlands.

    Even if the heart was destroyed, the brain was capable of surviving three minutes after death. That was too much time. The microbots would have enough time for regeneration. My sleeve rose higher on my arm as I reached for the gun. My eyes caught on the black ink on my forearm. 00000001.

    I pushed down the hammer once more. Click. If humanity could not survive when it was given the chance of immortality, it was never meant to survive. Regardless, human suffering was not an entertainment. Humans were not pawns, and...

      Life wasn't a chess game.

I lifted the gun to my temple and glared defiantly at the sky. "Game over."

    They watched with sick fascination.

I pulled the trigger.