December the 31st, 1999, crept around quicker than the team would have liked. I would have frozen time itself if I could.
I attended a family new years eve party, where my sister forced us all to wear headbands with '2000' in big gold letters on coiled springs, attached to the band, standing proud on top of our heads. I tried to enjoy the evening but in the back of my mind I kept replaying Chien Binh, Vox, Riley, and Paley all stating that we did not have much time left. I was half expecting violence to break out at the stroke of midnight. But it didn't. The UK, and the rest of the world, welcomed in the new year and the beginning of 2000, with most of the human population still feeling that any extra-terrestrial encounters were very much in our rearview mirror. And how wrong they were. The second invasion was not as abrupt as the first, the Takai-Shiro attack was what I would explain as a slow burner. Despite being a sly and tactical invasion, the Takai-Shiro's actions affected humans much more than the Anhurian attack.
The months rolled by, and as Tung, Lĕ and Vű had stated, none of our team appeared to be aging, if anything we were physically strong, healthy and all felt as if we were in our prime, despite our varying age ranges.
The search to find other Anhurian's continued over the coming months that passed and the communication links with Chien Binh and his brothers in the Son Doong Cave were successfully kept, and to our knowledge these comms had not been corrupted by any other being- human or otherwise.
We all worked away quietly in the background, in London, our team of scientists, agents and officers and some other trusted souls that we allowed in on our covert operation detail. I had told my family I had secured a research job in London. Telling them this was a mixture of truths and half-truths, which made it a little easier to miss out some details of what I was really doing, here and there.
The team were able to track some of what we believed to be the mischievous behaviour of the Takai-shiro, mainly through technology, like the internet, media platforms, blogs, promoting the spreading of misinformation. It was hard to convince other government of this interference from an alien species, particularly without any physical proof of the beings landing on earth. We felt like we were butting heads with many intelligence forces at multiple points, but there was no way that we were going to show our hand where the Anhurian's were concerned. It was our job to convince other humans of the existence and looming threat of the Takai-shiro, it was not the job of the Anhurian's, who had already suffered horribly at the hands of the alien foe, as well as at the hands of humans.
On the 25th of July 2000, the world changed, starting with the crashing of multiple Concorde supersonic passenger jets!
Of course, you won't remember the events of 1992, or the events that followed – particularly those of the early 2000's. There is a very carefully crafted reason for that. A twisting of truths. A cloaking of agendas. With item one on the agenda of the Takai-shiro being DESTRUCTION. Want to know more? Then stick around and be enlightened.
For a start- you are not nearly as scared of artificial intelligence as you should be!
A.J. and the team will return in The Millenium Invasion.