The aliens never won. At least, not what I think of as winning. But they didn't need to win. They just needed for us to be tired, and more than a bit scared. And then, they could execute their greatest stroke of tactical genius: not killing us. But to do that, they needed for us to lose hope, without backing us into a corner. They needed to kill XCOM.

I remember the exact moment it all came to ashes. I remember exactly where I was. Stationed as one of the guards of Vahlen's first, grasping attempts at gene modding. I never agreed with that lady, who always tried to play God. I'd say most of those who decided to go through with the tests didn't either. I was in that room a couple times, and the cadavers of half-mutated subjects often outnumbered the living. "Volunteers", they told us. "Their last hope at life", they said.

I hated being there. But on that fateful day, it was possibly the best place to be. Because as the aliens came through every orifice of XCOM HQ, the Gene Mod Lab had the luxury of being directly connected to the Armory. And so, those of us who were with Vahlen that day, we mooks that made up Base Security, received the new armor, while those actually competent in dealing with the X-Rays were gunned down with nothing but small arms to try and fend off an army of Mutons. Even the Doctor herself took up a rifle, and probably outshot me that day. Against all odds, we pushed them back out of the base. But it was all for naught.

When we took a tally of who we had left, it wasn't pretty. We still had most of the support staff: Shen, Bradford, and most of our whitecoats. But we had lost all of Bravo and Foxtrot Squads, and half of Delta. Worst of all, the Commander was nowhere to be seen. And with no Commander, no chance of us dealing with any alien threat with our roster of rookies, and a completely destroyed base, the Council unanimously voted to end the XCOM Project. Two days later, the governments of Earth surrendered. We had lost.

We learned over the years that the aliens had nearly overplayed their hand. If we wanted to fight, the aliens probably didn't have the resources to engage in total war. In hindsight, if they did they could and would have obliterated us by simply overrunning us with superior weaponry. So they opted for a better tactic. They offered peace and assistance, after their campaigns of terror. They bet that the average human just wanted to not be in imminent danger of dying. They were correct. And the governments of the world, once they realized their mistake, had already either been cowed by the aliens' use of our resources in creating a new world order, or were comfortably partaking in their company.

Hardly a week passed after the assault when we were given notice that all XCOM personnel were to be detained and taken in for questioning. Bradford, to his credit, told us that he had no plans to give himself up. Vahlen said the opposite. Most of us sided with our old commander. I was particularly pissed at Vahlen, and decided in my irate state that the best course of action was to rob her of her favourite project: Subject Sahara.

Sahara was the only one of Vahlen's subjects that had survived the entire gene mod procedure while expressing any of the traits she had hoped for. Her idea was that with the addition of big cat traits, one could create a super soldier on par with the Mutons. Perhaps even create a whole army of them to fight the invaders. Ultimately, the changes mainly proved superficial, but that didn't stop Vahlen from keeping her in a tank and poking her with metal rods every once in a while. It was the only success of her pet project, and as such whenever someone would question it she would just point to that tank.

The plan for me was to flee north with several others to XCOM's North American FOB in Canada. We had a friend who was a cargo pilot, and could probably get clearance for a delivery to the base. From there, we'd link up with the remaining North American elements and keep the resistance against the aliens going however we could. But before that, I made sure to give Vahlen an unpleasant surprise. We were to take off at midnight, to try and minimize the risk of us getting flagged in the daylight when we landed. An hour before takeoff, several of us broke into the Gene Lab with our security passes, removed Sahara from the tank, and stuck one of the more unfortunate corpses into the tube. We hid the body in a crate, and took it to the cargo plane, lifting off before anyone would realize anything was amiss. I wasn't going to let this poor soul get God-knows-what done to her by the aliens when she inevitably would fall into their grasp.

We arrived as dawn broke, and quickly got familiar with the base that would end up being my home for the next two decades. In some ways, I would learn that I got very lucky; the FOB was mostly off the record and through some string of luck, nobody ever ratted out our location. North America, too, was a good choice: no military on the continent took the surrenders of the Council well, and so resistance to the Aliens held out for a remarkable amount of time. Of course, this also led to several cities that refused to surrender being blown to smithereens, but there was coordinated action against the invaders, and from what I heard through the grapevine, some of it hit the new administration where it hurt.

There were a couple dozen of us on the base, and our ranks swelled as the major cities began to see their first traces of alien occupation. We'd occasionally get a member or two who would wander in, hoping for shelter, and we would be glad to provide. For we lacked any meaningful ways to actually fight back against the aliens. We had what weaponry we could scrounge from the HQ, and some small arms onsite, but for the most part our options were wait, wait, and wait some more. Fortunately, the aliens had better things to devote their limited manpower to.

Most of those that came with me from XCOM HQ are dead now. Actually, it's just me and Sahara from that original crew. Some got picked off during supply raids, and some simply had old wounds catch up to them, in the absence of the advanced recovery tech we had at base. Sahara adjusted well to the new environment; she didn't remember anything of her past, but there wasn't much of a past to go back to, to be honest. I never went back to the cities, but from what I heard, it's all different. Alien tech, surveillance everywhere, and a new regime calling themselves ADVENT. I don't think I could tolerate it.

And so, twenty years passed. Those of us who used to be soldiers kept our fitness up, not knowing when we would have to fight. Those anti-aging drugs we sometimes found off of ADVENT supplies didn't hurt either. We all held out our hope that someday, the resistance would be able to do something meaningful. We had to, or we'd go insane.

Two weeks ago, we heard some rumblings through the grapevine. They were vague at first: someone taking up the moniker Shen had stolen an alien barge. Then that Old Man Bradford was still alive and kicking, somewhere in South America. And the final bit of news that blew us all away: XCOM's commander, The Commander, was not only alive, but had been rescued, and was reinstating the XCOM directive, as "the highest ranking member of the Council remaining".

Two days ago, we received a visitor. Clad in civilian clothing, and two decades worse for wear, but still recognizable as the Commander's old right hand. Bradford was, indeed, alive, and all we had heard through resistance communications was true as well. We were, allegedly, the first resistance group that the skeleton crew of what Bradford called the Avenger could find, which was alarming until he informed us that it had taken him two weeks to dig up our location with far more intel then the aliens would ever be willing to invest in finding us.

He told us that the ship needed supplies, and it needed crew. The former we provided readily, and the latter even more so. Every single one of us who was combat-trained volunteered, and some less qualified joined in as well. We were given coordinates, and warned to not leave our own people too defenseless. Nevertheless, we've resolved to all go. If ADVENT comes to break our doors down, we don't stand a chance anyways. Supplies will be a bit rough, but we have enough stored up from our years of raids. Plus, a decent chunk of us won't be taking up resources anyways. We set out when the sun sets, and with a bit of luck and no ADVENT checkpoints, we'll get to this retrofitted supply ship before day breaks.

So why am I writing this? Well, if you've found this, it either means you've been rifling through my personal effects, the haven has fallen and you've somehow obtained this piece of paper, or most likely, I'm dead, and this box is in the lost and found for y'all to pick through. I dunno. I guess I just want someone to know what happened before everything went to shit, and how we lived after. Maybe have this preserved in a museum, if we kick the aliens six feet under. I just don't want to be forgotten immediately, in the likely event that I die. I've resolved to not let XCOM fall again, even if it means my life.

Vigilo Confido,

Jack "Fury" Walls