ASCENSION: BOOK 3- APOCALYPSE.

Chapter 10: Links To The Past.

As I explained about the intensions of Queen Freya, of her mysterious journal and the existsnce of a second Flame, Ravens interest was peaked. She set aside her anger and swiftly went to work with Monty on our computer systems. She looked into any files we held on Scandinavian A.I research and The Second Dawn reference before the bombs fell. Digital archives to the past history of our world were incredibly limited. Even information about Becca Pramheda was scarce, The Commanders and The Flamekeepers of Polis were the only once who carried her secrets.
As our computers ran their search protocols, Raven scanned our air for fluctuations in radiation levels. Her results were frightening.
"This was the level of radiation when our people returned to Earth. It should have slowly been falling, instead it's begun to increase. The stories these Nordic Invaders speak of, rain that burns and kills, toxic air, all lean towards radiation poisoning. As for this wave of fire, it's all linked. I have a theory but if I'm right there's no way of stopping what's to come."
Raven and Monty both concurred that it was a strong possibility that any nuclear power stations that'd survived the bombs had now begun to meltdown, all the evidence led to this conclusion. If that was the case, shelter from the inevitable was the only way we would survive and Queen Freya seemed to hold the key to such salvation.
As our systems completed their searched Monty delivered the findings.
"There's not a lot to go on. A few A.I research projects were registered throughout Scandinavia, only one in Norway was linked with the U.S. It was a secondary project after the first one known as The A.L.I.E Code was deemed 'too unpredictable' and was scheduled to be shut down. Doctor Sigurd Andersen headed the Norwegian lab, the CEO of the entire project was Doctor Rebecca Franco who was based on the East Coast of the U.S. but also had a purpose built facility on a space station called, Polaris."
The whole room had their interest sparked as everything began to fit into place.

"So this Doctor Franco created the A.I we now know as The Flame?" Bellamy asked.
Raven nodded, "All roads point to that conclusion. She was Becca Pramheda, The First Commander. They say she fell from the sky and saved the ancestors of The Clans. She must have been on the station, Polaris when the bombs fell. That's how she survived Praimfaya, that's how she brought The Flame to Earth."
There was so much of our history we never knew about, information that seemed so arbitrary until now, until we had a reason to look into the past and begin to connect the dots.
"What about this reference to someting called The Second Dawn?" I asked.
Monty showed us all he could find from our archives, "This man right here, Bill Cadogan. He inherited millions from his father's death, formed some kind of doomsday cult called, The Second Dawn. A few weeks before the bombs fell he gave a speech about how technology would be the end of us all. Then it really gets interesting. His father was an investor in the sciences, before he died he'd pledged a considerable amount of money to an A.I project, Bill continued to fund it under a pseudonym. Kinda strange for someone who seemed so anti-tech."
I couldn't believe what I was hearing or seeing. The triangular marking I saw on the cover of Queen Freya's journal matched that of The Second Dawn symbol, "The A.L.I.E Project! Sigurd or a member of his team were Second Dawn. Cadogan must have brainwashed them enough to use this 'unpredictable' A.I code to bring about their end of days. He knew about it, because he orchestrated it. This bunker Freya spoke of must have been where Cadogan's chosen few survived the bombs. That was his end game. "
Bellamy looked at me in shock of our findings, "And Becca, she knew of this?"
I shook my head, "I doubt it. According to this, she was the one who ordered The A.L.I.E Code to be firewalled and subsequently erased. Who knows how many of her team were involved with this cult. They used her technology to end it all and left her in space, looking down on a scorched Earth, billions dead, all the time thinking she was the cause. That's why she came back, why she came home... to save what was left of the human race."