Viktor was surprised by Kane's words. His plans, even when GDI derailed them time and again, always seemed to somehow get right back on track. How could everything have gone so wrong for him when he left here? He really had been beaten somehow, but by whom? From what was going on when his warship came through the threshold's portal, he had the feeling that the Scrin were most definitely involved, but how had they tracked him back to that other world? Beaten him there, even?

"A hundred years too late? What do you mean?" Viktor asked, head tilting a bit.

"I mean that when I got there, my people had already been at war with the Scrin for a hundred years, and were about to lose. Worse, I was to blame for it, in more ways that one." Kane rubbed his temples with the tips of his fingers, leaning forward. "You see, the most direct way was that I had Legion launch my ship at the end of the third war, while GDI was distracted with their victory over Nod and the Scrin." It seemed so odd to hear him calling them the Scrin, when so often in the past he had called them the 'visitors' in public. "The Scrin, aware that Earth did not yet have a real space fleet, were curious about the ship as it left the planet, and tracked it… scanned it… saw that it wasn't a vessel from the planet… and they followed it."

"They followed it all the way back to your planet?" Kane nodded silently in confirmation, "That was only fifty three years ago though that the ship would have launched. How are you responsible for the fifty years before that?"

Kane was quiet for a moment, hanging his head, and slowly letting out a breath as he looked up at Viktor. "Because I created them."

"You created the Scrin?"

"I created the Scrin. My people created Tiberium. Tiberium was supposed to be a simple mining material. It was very effective; as I'm sure you're aware. The problem was that to use it in mining, we needed a labor force of some kind that wouldn't be injured by it… so… an engineering team was assembled. I was the head of the team. Our goal was to create a biomechanical life form that could safely harvest and process Tiberium. We were able to do it easily enough, but the problem was that in doing so… we had opened Pandora's Box." Reaching into his robes, he took out what looked like a compact and pressed a button. Four little claw looking appendages came out and locked in place – and were soon revealed to b hologram emitters.

"The original labor force consisted of their two most basic infantry units. To control them more easily, we created the Masterminds." As Kane spoke, the hologram emitters showed images of the various units in a sort of slideshow. "That changed as time wore on though. Masterminds had access not only to the collective intelligence of those creations below them, but also to the minds of their creators. The more they were around my people, the more they learned. They began to develop their mental abilities as well, and eventually, started going rogue. Before we knew it, we had an uprising on our hands."

"Doesn't sound all that bad, if it was just their basic infantry and some Masterminds." Viktor said, making a simple observation, and Kane nodded.

"You would think, right?" Then the once prophet shook his head. "That's what we thought at first too – that it was an isolated incident. That we could quell it easily and that everything would go back to normal. Some variable had been off. We'd missed something in the genetic coding process, or some part of their mechanisms had been faulty and we'd just have to do a redesign, or at least ensure that production standards were up. We were wrong though. The first Mastermind, codenamed 'Overlord' later on, managed to escape during the first battle. His forces were destroyed, but he had managed to learn a great deal about our weapons and tactics, and he moved on to other mining camps, spreading pieces of his knowledge, and rallying other Masterminds, other 'Foremen' under him. Before we knew it, it was a full blown revolution."

Viktor sat back and pinched the bridge of his nose. "So you're telling me that not only did you make these things, you couldn't manage to put them down?"

"Essentially? Yes." Kane blew out a breath. He'd never told anyone this tale – granted, until now he'd had reasons for not revealing what he knew. Now it hardly mattered. He was no great leader, no prophet; no messiah. Now he was just a man. "Overall our military was crushing them in every battle, but it was guerilla warfare at its finest. Every time we got close to something important, they hit us hard enough to stop us, drug the battle out until they could move their camp, and then went into full retreat. Our lumbering units were too slow to keep up with them, and they usually ended up leaving traps in their wake to ensure that they would slow us further."

"So what was it that they were protecting?"

"Their first Drone Platforms. They'd build a small base, produce more of themselves, and move again before we could get to their main base. Every time they deployed though, they would research just a bit more. Every platform had a different task; a different component of their main goal to complete."

"Which was?"

"Their first space vessel. We didn't know what they were building until it was already completed and leaving our planet. Their Overlord and a few Foremen were aboard it, along with a Drone Platform and a labor force. Before we could even react, they had left our star system. The Foremen left behind kept the battle up for years, expanding their arsenal in minor ways. They seeded areas of the planet with Tiberium to cause ecological damage and to make areas uninhabitable, but it never caused us as much of a problem as it did Earth, as we had created it and knew how to clean it up already. It wasn't until the Scrin made alterations to it that we began having problems with it, but even then we were able to get control of it again relatively quickly. For the most part, Tiberium infestation was just a delaying tactic of theirs."

"So what happened in the end?"

"In the end, they managed to build a couple more ships, load up as much of their forces as they could, and then launched them. What was left behind made a last stand in order to try and allow the ships to get away. One did. The other was shot down before leaving the atmosphere and crashed in the middle of one of our ice caps." Kane smirked then. "We let them freeze there and then went in and began dissecting them. We discovered via the dissected Foremen that they had… evolved, in a manner. Their brains had grown and their nervous systems had become engrained with the bio circuitry that ran through their bodies. They'd stopped being slaves a long time before the first revolt."

"So how many of them are actually… smart? I mean the Buzzers seem like a bunch of flying chainsaws that just sort of gravitate around one another in a ball, like a bunch of locust. Hardly the most intelligent beings I think."

"The Masterminds are the original intelligent ones. Assimilators are a step down from them, it seems. Past that…none of them are really intelligent. They just take orders from the Masterminds and Assimilators – though they only rely on the Assimilators if there are no Masterminds around, and are only about half as effective."

Viktor nodded. "So… basically… the entire war they fought with your people was one massive distraction. Their main goal was never to win, but rather, it was to escape the planet."

"Precisely."

"So how the hell did they end up some massive force capable of invading a planet?"

Kane laughed. "You haven't witnessed an invasion Viktor."

"Well maybe I wasn't alive yet when…"

Viktor trailed off as Kane held up a hand. "No… I mean they never invaded Earth."

"Then what do you call…?"

"That? That was a recon and harvesting force. They were duped into coming early. Normally they wait until the indigenous population is wiped out naturally by Tiberium, and then they come in. The forces that came to Earth were never meant to have to do more than possibly mop up."

"How do they know when to come in? They were nowhere near the planet."

"They have their sensors programmed to detect a natural liquid T detonation. When one can occur without being forced, they know the planet is ripe and that any possible intelligent life is most likely incapacitated."

"So basically they seed a planet and wait for the crystals to do the dirty work for them."

"That's the simplest way to put it, yes." Kane nodded, and went on. "I tricked them into coming here in order for them to get that threshold built. I knew that GDI and Nod would be able to fight them off individually. They'd be worse for wear by the time the Scrin were beaten back off the planet, but they'd take long enough to do it that a tower would get completed."

A look of realization swept over Viktor when he heard that. "No wonder you were so furious over the alliance between GDI and Nod during the war… you knew that if they worked together, it would be over too soon. The towers would never have gotten built."

"That, among other things…" A sigh came from the former leader's lips. "There are things I truly, deeply regret about that conflict, Viktor. I lost a good friend, and one of the most talented commanding officers I've ever known." Inside, Viktor was grinning. There was a big surprise in store for Kane. Outwardly though, he gave a solemn nod.

"I can understand that." Viktor said. "So what happened on your planet though? Obviously enough, the Scrin were pulling their typical crap. How did they end up forcing you back here?"

"They were already in the middle of an invasion when my ship arrived. They knew it had come from Earth, and stepped up operations tenfold. We'd been winning the war up until that point, but when my ship arrived they made sure to wipe out most of our space fleet and land more troops. They dropped massive crystals of Tiberium all over the planet. By the time me and my followers actually arrived on the planet… it was my people enslaved and fighting the guerilla war. A complete role reversal from their origins. My followers and I ended up joining the resistance forces, fought for twenty three years, managed to recapture some of the ships of our fleet – including mine, and then made a run for it. Everyone back on my planet is either dead, dying, or being converted by force into some sort of twisted cannon fodder or new unit to add to their ranks."

"You mean…?"

"Yes Viktor…" He let out a breath slowly, "…What came through that portal is all that's left of my people and the followers that went with me. The Scrin killed everyone else. We're it."