• Alpha Force were the finest heroes the world had ever seen. For over two decades they had protected us. Collectively they had saved the world too many times to count, often thwarting some scheme or plot at the last minute. Like most teams they had their arch nemesis. Unifer.

    Their battles were epic. Together they were the titans of their age. Alpha Force, the greatest heroes and Unifer the greatest villain. Each time they fought the fate of the world hung in balance and the course of history changed. No matter how complex the scheme, Alpha Force foiled it. No matter how many times they beat him, Unifer would always rise from the ashes to once again threaten world peace.

    Until the unthinkable happened.

    Until the day the Unifer won.

    March 4th 2008, after two years in hiding, Unifer launches an assault on Washington. Using an army he had raised seemingly out of nowhere, local heroes and military forces could only hold him at a standstill as his forces besieged the centre of the city. Finally, at 17:02 EST, Alpha Force arrived on the scene. For the next two hours the heroes fought the enemy in what was quickly becoming one of the great battles of history. Then Unifer arrived on scene.

    Confronting Alpha Force in the middle of the National Mall by the ruins of the toppled Washington Monument, he smiled and awaited his foes. As the heroes prepared to strike during his customary monologue, Unifer simply glanced at the news crews that had arrived on the scene. Ensuring that the cameras were broadcasting every second of what was to follow, instead of launching into a prepared speech, he smiled and pointed his first at the heroes. A beam of brilliant white energy lashed out and enveloped Alpha Force. In an instant the world's greatest heroes were shredded and slaughtered live on network television. Their deaths broadcast to a stunned world.

    Gloating over his victory, and with his forces now standing unopposed, he turned to the cameras. With a small wave to the viewers, he pressed a button on his wrist and every computer on the planet crashed.

    The world plunged into darkness and chaos as power grids failed, communication networks were knocked out and the delicate technological infrastructure of civilisation crumbled. Flashes of light in the sky heralded the next phase in his plan as EMP weapons secretly deployed into orbit detonated, disabling all unshielded electronics. Hardened military systems were naturally immune but they had already been compromised. The same self-aware electronic life form which had seized control of civilian computer networks now co-opted the military ones. Crippling the secure communications channels, Medusa quickly cracked the launch codes for the world's nuclear arsenal. As an object lesson, the cities of Mumbai, Karachi, Delhi, Shanghai, Moscow, Sao Paolo, Seoul, Istanbul, Mexico City, Jakarta, New York, Tokyo, Lima, Beijing, Cairo, Tehran, London, Bogotá, Lagos and Hong Kong perished in nuclear fire, killing some 179 million people. With the world's twenty largest cities destroyed, Unifer threatened to unleash nuclear destruction on the rest unless the governments of the world surrendered.

    With the armies of the world paralysed and with Unifer in almost complete control, resistance soon crumbled. Within 18 months the world was his and a new order, The Unity had been born.

    It is now forty years later. All the old heroes are either dead, imprisoned or in hiding. Few still remember the glory days when you could look up into the sky and see the likes of Centurion, Patriot, Defender and the rest of Alpha Force and know that hope, freedom and justice were more then just words stricken from everyday speech.

    Unifer rules the world with an iron fist imposing martial law. The Unity proclaims “One World, One Vision, One Voice ... A World That Works”. Summery justice and televised executions keep the populace in line. Keep your heads down, obey the law, don't make trouble. These are the rules people live by now. Many have now forgotten the old world, they only remember the chaos and fighting of the Unification War. The world still bears the scars of the biological and chemical warfare used by the old regimes and the terrorist atrocities blamed on the resistance before it was crushed.

    However, the world is not without hope. A new generation has grown up in this brave new world surrounded by decaying remains of the old. A new generation raised on the stories of great heroes and epic battles. A generation that refuses to believe the propaganda and struggles to uncover the truth. A generation determined to taste freedom at any cost.

    The old heroes failed, time for someone new.

    13:45 June 19th, 2049
    North American Zone, East Coast Metroplex, Sector 23 (Old NYC)

    A bullet ricocheted off the road sign just centimetres from the boys head. Biting down a curse he jumped over the footbridge's safety barrier and the hard shoulder of the road below. “Bullets,” he thought, “they're shooting ACTUAL bullets at me!” Darting between the slow moving traffic he glanced behind him as the armoured thugs of the Unity's enforcement division reached the side of the road. The first shot had probably been a warning shot, probably. The next one would definitely be aimed at his head. As would the next 20 or 30 in the burst. UniCops were not known for subtlety.

    They day had started off pretty normal all things considered. Waking up at seven, washed and changed by half seven, at school by eight fifteen ready to begin another day of indoctrination and training. He'd never stood out at school, kept his head down and avoided trouble. The standard survival tactic. It had been during lunch break when the UniCops had turned up at school. Now Toby Smith, Tobs to his friends, had never done anything to warrant their attention, but everyone knew that if the UniCops came looking you got lost. Anyone they took in “for questioning” was usually never seen again. So Toby had vaulted over the school fence and ran. That's when they had begun chasing. All in all, the day was turning out pretty lousy.

    Down here, at street level street, the congested traffic and crowded buildings might give him an advantage. Ground vehicles would be hard pressed to get through the traffic and flyers would be unable to manoeuvre between the towering skyscrapers and arcologies. After the Unification War the Unity had rebuilt the devastated Manhattan Island in order to house the refugees from the continent's interior, fleeing the ecological devastation being inflicted on the former US heartlands. It had meant to be a showcase for the new regime but like most things the Unity promised, the reality was different from the newscasts. Forty years after the original was destroyed, Manhattan Island was once again a towering collection of buildings cramped together on a small overcrowded island.

    All that stood between Toby and the relative safety, was the drone lane. A section of road reserved for the sole use of automated cargo drones. Huge articulated lorries, often three or four trailers long, and travelling at up to 100 kph. Controlled entirely by computers and using satellite navigation, they stopped for nothing, even if a pedestrian was in their path. Only the largest corporations could afford to operate the behemoths, and even then licenses were only granted to those corps that were on good terms with the Unity. Taking a deep breath, Toby launched himself in to a gap between a pair of Allied Technologies trucks. Legs pumping furiously, he was halfway across when he realised he wasn't going to make it.

    Time seemed to slow down to a crawl and in crystal clarity he could make out every detail of the trucks grill rushing towards him at bone crunching speed. Instead of leaping out of the way in a futile attempt to get clear, the boy jumped UP! His left foot planting itself firmly on the front of the bonnet, thrusting downwards and propelling himself up and over the front cab onto the trailer behind and landing on all fours. Toby looked at his hands as he crouched on the roof, scarcely believing what he had just done. He'd always been athletic at school but jumping over the cab of a truck moving nearly a hundred kilometres per hour to land safely on the trailer behind was practically impossible. He was still trying to process the thought when a spray of bullets caught him directly in the leg. Loosing his footing he slipped off the side of the fast moving truck and sailed through the air. With a snap, his head connected with the concrete wall of a building. His limb body rebounded into a side alley where it landed in a dumpster, half filled with stagnant water and trash.

    “Did you see that shot?” one of the UniCops asked as forced their way across the road, stopping traffic. “Sent the punk flying that did.”

    “Our orders were to take the kid in alive dipshit. Not in a body bag,” his partner retorted. Obviously not impressed.

    “So the brat resisted arrest, you know what these muties are like.”

    His partner didn't respond, he'd already reached the pavement where they had seen the body hit the wall. There was no sign of the kid, not even a blood splatter or trail to follow. He pressed a stud on the collar of his helmet. “Central, unit 219 reporting. We've lost track of the target.”

    “Unit 219, sat scan reports that his ID implant is still transmitting in your vicinity. We put it within 50 meters. Can't narrow it down, we've got some interference from the buildings.”

    “Received Central,” he responded with a sigh. “You check that way, I'll go this way. Stay in radio contact and for chrissakes, use you damn blaster. We need him alive.” As his partner stalked off, he muttered “Damn rookie” under his breath.

    In the alleyway, a head bobbed up out of the water gasping for breath. Toby pulled himself out of the dumpster and slumped against it on the floor. Gingerly feeling his forehead where only moments before the bones of his skull had been crushed inwards, he let out a shudder. “Ok, that was different.” Things like that had been happening recently. Cuts healing faster than they should, not getting burned when touching a hot pan. But nothing like getting his neck broken and his skull crushed in and still be able to walk away from it just a few minutes later. Speaking of which...

    “Hey you!” Zap! And a blue bolt of energy struck the ground at his feet. “Freeze!” One of the cops, the younger one, stood at the entrance to the alley with a hand blaster. Toby was beginning to suspect that he could take a bullet but wasn't so sure about the stunning energy of a blaster and he had no intention of finding out. As the cop began to advance Toby reached for the nearest object, a lump of stone, and hurled it at the cops helmet. The stone shot through the air and smashed into the visor which shattered. Screaming in pain and clutching his now broken nose, the cop looked at the boy with murderous intent in his eyes.

    “You little s**t, just you keep resisting. I'm gonna enjoy making you pay for that!” He howled as he drew a combat knife and leapt at the boy. The two grappled in the mud, the knife at the boys throat. Momentarily stunned by the ferocity of the attack, Toby locked eyes with the cop as he tried to hold him back.

    The look in someone's eyes that wants nothing more than you to be dead is a cold thing, something that can chill you to the bone the first time you see it. This was it, this was where he was going to die. Alone, sopping wet in an filthy alley. Murdered by a psychotic cop. It was at that point that Toby snapped. “******** that,” he thought, “I am not going to let it end like this.” With a howl of rage he hurled cop against the wall as if he was nothing more than a rag doll. The cop struck the wall hard and fell to the floor dazed dropping the knife.

    As the cop groaned Toby stood and grabbed the knife, holding it awkwardly. Logically he knew that his only chance to escape was to make sure that the cop couldn't follow. But for a fourteen year old boy, even one in his situation, that was an option he could not choose. Pausing for only a few seconds, he tucked the combat knife into the back of his pants under his sweatshirt and ran. The guns he left because he knew they could be tracked and they probably could only be fired by their authorised owner anyway.

    A figure in combat fatigues watched the fleeing boy through a pair of old binoculars from a nearby fire escape. “Echo Four to Echo Two, target is heading your way. He's going to run into some trouble before then. Is the distraction ready?”

    Toby ran out into the next street and raced down the pavement trying to put enough distance between him and the cop. As he turned the corner, he glanced behind him to make sure the cop wasn't following him and ran headlong into his partner. The boy was knocked to the floor by a vicious punch to the head. “That's enough running for you kid,” the cop muttered as he shot Toby with the blaster. Toby screamed as the electrical energy coursed through his system, paralysing his muscles.

    “Toby Smith, citizen ID 7115202 dash beta, you are charged with violation of the genetic security act,” the cop began as he drew out a set of manacles. “You will be taken into custody where your mutations will be analysed. Once your abilities have been catalogued, you will be terminated.” He crouched down to look the boy in the eye. “I'm sorry kid, your file says you're a good kid. Maybe if you hadn't ran you could have been recruited but the law says runners get executed. Them's the breaks unfortunately.”

    The cop was reaching down to cuff Toby's hands behind his back when the blast of a horn caused him to turn around just in time to see a cargo drone swerve from its assigned lane, through the safety barrier and onto the pavement. Toby was unable to move as the hulk bore down upon them and he watched as the cop leapt to safety. At the last moment the truck swerved to the side following the cop. With a sickening crunch it ran headlong into him, leaving behind a bloody smear on the pavement. With another blast of its horn, the drone crashed back through the barrier and rejoined the flow of traffic.

    He was still trying to make sense of what had just happened when he was enveloped by a white glow. A fraction of a second later he vanished leaving behind no trace that he was ever there.

    A figure watching the scene from a nearby footbridge spoke into a throat mike. “Echo One, this is Echo Two, package is delivered did you get him?”

    Several kilometres away and over two hundred meters underground, a man stood over an unconscious Toby, a tranquillizer gun in his hand. “Package received Echo Two. Good work people, everyone get back to base. Oh, an Echo Three, we need to have a word about that distraction of yours.”