Log Entry – Dr. Mariel Kessler, exobiology division. CDC field liaison.
Encrypted Archive: "Hyperion Collapse Files – Vol. I"
They called it Operation Dawnwall.
The last coordinated military strike against the Hyperion creatures. Dozens of nations mobilized. Air strikes, heavy armored assaults, satellite tracking, chemical bombardments. For the first time, we truly acted as a single species.
It lasted eleven days we thought superior firepower would win. We were wrong.
I watched live footage from a base in Berlin Apache gunships raining missiles down on a nest of hyper mutated moose in northern Canada. Direct hits. Nothing survived.
Until the smoke cleared from beneath the scorched wreckage, something larger emerged. Not running. Learning.
Hyperion didn't just adapt. It learned.
The next day, five of our aircraft were brought down by aerial interception things we never saw before. Winged organisms. Engine mimics. We didn't know if they evolved in days… or were waiting.
In the Philippines, armored divisions tried to push into Cavite after contact was lost. Nothing came back. Satellite footage showed twisted remains of tanks, metal ripped open like tin, crews half digested. It wasn't war.
It was harvest.
Each front collapsed differently.
Europe lost half its territory in a month. Cities were turned into biostructures flesh-wrapped buildings, tree roots spliced with animal limbs. No one understood the pattern. The creatures weren't spreading a disease. They were terraforming.
The United States fell into silence after Chicago. A biological "maelstrom" bloomed from the Great Lakes. Civilian air corridors were shut down. Communications vanished overnight.
Africa held out longest. Not because of weapons, but because of wisdom. Entire regions evacuated their cities before the first surge. They understood instinct.
Australia, isolated by geography, became a fortress. They called it The Basin a ringed mega compound built around Perth, powered by geothermal reserves and satellite linked defense grids. They shut down their borders before the fall reached the coasts.
Japan became an archipelago of steel. Kyoto, Osaka, parts of Hokkaido survived. Anything else that moved was crushed by automated suppression drones. Cold, calculated.
Greenland turned its frozen landmass into a research and survival zone. A human redoubt carved into the ice.
But everything else?
Gone. Not by war. Not by plague.
By evolution.
Hyperion doesn't conquer. It supersedes.
And the worst part? It doesn't hate us. There's no malice. We're just in the way.
Sometimes, I read the old strategic reports the ones that came before the fall. We believed we had time. That we'd find a vaccine. A counter agent. That we could "contain the mutation."
We never understood: Hyperion wasn't a mutation. It was a replacement protocol. Something born of our own hands. Our own arrogance.
A final note came through days ago from a field lab in Siberia before it went dark:
"We tried injecting Mirror Life into a restrained subject. Full integration in thirty six seconds. Host absorbed the Mirror Life strain entirely and gained enhanced regenerative traits. Mirror-Life is not a cure. It's now enhancing the mutations."
I saved that report in a separate file.
Because I think one day, if we're ever going to reclaim this world, we'll have to kill the very thing we once called a miracle.
But until then, all we can do is survive.
And wait for the day the guns won't fall silent.