January 1997. The beginning of a new chapter in the lives of Maksym Polishuk and Alma Blanco, two former U.N. investigators who now worked for the newly established X-Com Project. Though most people who knew about the project scoffed at it, and at the idea of aliens and supernatural phenomena, Maksym and Alma were believers. They had volunteered for the position, determined to find and eliminate any unconventional threat to the citizens of Earth.
A week earlier they had transferred to their new base of operations, which U.N. bureaucrats had conveniently placed on Crete, settled in and gotten to know their new co-workers as well as each other. Now, at the beginning of the new year, they were ready for anything.
Two weeks later, the call came. Suspicious activity of an unknown nature, in the Saudi desert close to the Red Sea. Galvanized, Maksym and Alma hopped into the base's car and set off to catch the next ferry off Crete.
The trip was long and tedious, filled with hours of waiting at border checkpoints and nosy customs officers. The Middle East was not an easy region to traverse by car, and Maksym had to drive the last leg of the journey through Saudi-Arabia, because it was illegal for Alma to do so. By this time, both agents had grown tired of spending so much time cooped up in one another's company. This had better be worth it.
Their journey led them to a desolate area off the beaten path. Aside from a few crumbling structures sticking out of the sand, there was naught but desolation as far as the eye could see. It was late at night by the time the pair arrived, but Maksym took the high-power flashlight out of the trunk, and they set to work.
At first, all was quiet. Maksym and Alma crept through the old ruins, alert for any movement or sounds that might indicate danger. Then, suddenly, there! In the shadows! A massive shape loomed, something bipedal, with voracious looking jaws.
The creature sauntered over and promptly mauled them both to death.
Following the disappearance of their agents along with their equipment and their car, the U.N. decided to abandon the X-Com project, citing "a waste of time and resources". The money was instead spent on new water coolers in U.N. offices worldwide.
The end, forever.
