• 16:22 June 19th, 2049
    200m below Sector 23

    Toby woke with a pounding headache. With a ringing in his ears he cracked open an eye and looked around. He was lying in a bed, and judging by the beeping equipment next to it and the vague antiseptic smell, it was in some sort of hospital room. Apart from the bed he was lying in the room contained two other unoccupied beds and several computer displays, presumably used for displaying patients records and medical scans although they were all off at the moment. A clock mounted on the wall opposite the bed indicated that he had been unconscious for over two hours. As he propped himself up on his elbows, he tried to recall what he was doing in hospital. Had he been in some sort of accident? Looking at himself, he didn't seem to be injured although he did notice that under the blanket he was stark naked.

    As he tried to process what was going on, he began to remember the last few hours in flashes. Fragments of memory, barely connected to one another. The UniCops at school. Vaulting over a 4 meter barbed wire fence. Being chased through the streets. Being shot in the leg. Surviving a broken neck and crushed skull. The cop with the knife. Being stunned and paralysed. A cargo drone swerving off the road. The wet crunch as it hit the cop. The red smear being left behind then a flash of blinding white light.

    At this point Toby was sitting bolt upright in near panic, his mind racing from one worst case scenario to the next. One of the two doors into the room opened and a young women, no older than twenty backed into the room carrying something. She was wearing black jeans, black trainers and a loose-fitting white shirt. Her long blond hair was tied back into a pony tail. As she turned, Toby could see that she was wearing a silver chain around her neck and was carrying a digital clipboard with two cans of coke balanced on it in one hand and two shrink-wrapped sandwiches in the other. Whoever she was, she certainly didn't fit the picture of the stereotypical UniCop.

    When the woman realised that he was awake she smiled and tossed one of the sandwiches on the bed. “Thought you might be hungry. Didn't know what you might like but cheese seemed the safest choice.” She followed up the sandwich with the coke can. “And you can never have too much liquid sugar in your system.”

    “Er,” Toby began, now a little confused, “no offence but who the hell are you, where the hell am I, and what the ******** happened to my clothes!”

    She laughed as she pulled up a chair and began to munch on her sandwich which seemed to be some sort of peanut butter and blue goo concoction. “Ok, in that order, my names Sarah and I'm the one who brought you here. You're in a safe place where the Unity can't find you and you're clothes are in the drawer under the bed. You were soaking wet after that dumpster dive of yours. They were filthy and you'd have probably caught pneumonia or worse if we'd left them on so I had them dried out.”

    “But what about the ID implant? They can track those things from space.”

    “Well, we're a quarter kilometre underground, not even God himself can track an implant through that much rock. Besides, it wouldn't do them much good since we surgically removed it and disposed of it while you were out.”

    “You cut me open!” he nearly shouted.

    “Yeah, and let me tell you,” she continued as she poked his chest with her finger, “operating on someone that can regenerate as fast as you is not easy. As soon as I made an incision you healed it back up. It was a real hack job, I had to get someone to hold the hole open with their hands while I cut the implant out from under your heart. How do you feel by the way.”

    “There's this tinny echo whenever you speak and I feel like I'm about to throw up.”

    Sarah consulted the display next to the bed and tapped a few things on the clipboard. “That's a normal side-effect of the drugs. They should pass in an hour or two. We didn't want you to wake up mid-op. THAT would have been messy.” She laughed at the last bit. Toby just grimaced meekly. “We put a fake implant in to replace the one we took out. You can't reprogram the ones the Unity put in but the one that's in there now can be reprogrammed with a new ID with the right tools.”

    He just sat in silence looking down, not even touching the unopened sandwich. Sarah got up and threw her empty wrapper in the trash before turning back to the boy. “Look kid, get dressed. There someone who wants to talk to you and he can explain things better than I can. I'll be waiting outside when you're done.” And with that she left the room.

    His head was swimming with a thousand unasked and unanswered questions. Reaching under the bed he pulled out the plastic bag containing his clothes. True to her word, they were dry and clean. The marks from the stagnant water were gone although there was a slight discolouration around the bullet holes in his shorts. Still feeling a little numb, he pulled on the ¾ length grey shorts and his red hooded top. As he stood up, a sudden wave of nausea flooded over him. The other door in the room was marked toilet. Clutching his mouth, he leapt over the bed and sprinted across the room. He threw the door open and just made it to the sink in time before he could no longer hold the contents of his stomach down. After a few heaves his stomach was empty and he gulped down some water to get rid of the acrid taste of bile. Wiping his mouth with the back of his sleeve he looked in the mirror. It was at that point that everything that he had been suppressing and avoided thinking about since all this had began came crashing down on him. Toby Smith was a mutant and an enemy of the state. The government would be looking for him, and if they found him, they would probably kill him. He could never go home, that would be the first place they would look. As far as his family was concerned he might as well be dead. His life, as he had known it, was over. His legs buckled at the knees and the tears that he could no longer contain finally burst free. He lay on the floor sobbing.

    Sarah stood outside the door listening to the boy crying. “Poor kid”, she thought, it's not every day that you learn the authorities want you dead. Thinking back, she remembered when the Unity had come for her five years ago. She hadn't been much older than him and she'd cried for days.

    After a few minutes he seemed to calm down and five minutes after she'd left the room he opened the door and joined her in the corridor. He'd cleaned himself up but he still seemed a little delicate. Sarah knew better than to push him about what had happened after she'd left him alone.

    Sarah started walking down the corridor, Toby following silently behind. He glanced curiously at the walls as they walked. Unlike the clean and white walls of the infirmary, the walls out here were dirty and grey. The cracked concrete looked old and here and there, faded markings were still visible on the wall although the words were no longer legible. “You said we were underground, just where are we?”

    “Apparently, this place was some sort of bomb shelter during the Cold War or something.”

    “What's the Cold War?”

    “It was this big war between the two countries that happened before the Unification War except there was no actual fighting.”

    “Hmph, don't sound like much of a war,” Toby mumbled.

    They passed several doors marked unsafe “Unsafe: Do No Enter”. One corridor branching off theirs was barred with wire mesh, beyond which Toby could see the rubble of a collapsed ceiling. The general state of repair didn't exactly fill Toby with confidence about the bunkers structural stability. Eventually, after climbing flight of stairs they emerged into a large and well lit room. The room was dominated by a large table surrounded by chairs. At one end, a large video screen was mounted on the wall. It currently displayed what appeared to be a dozen feeds from security camera's. Disks and data chips were scattered over the table. They were also not alone as there two other people in the room.

    Sitting at the table was a kid not much older than Toby wearing ratty blue jeans, a white long sleeved t-shirt and an orange sweatshirt with cut-off sleeves. A deep scar crossed the brow of his nose, spanning the full width of his face just under his eyes. For some reason, he was glaring at Toby.

    From across the room, a young Latino who looked about twenty waved and walked over. His long red hair, dyed and not natural, was held out of his face by a head band. He wore combat pants with an urban camouflage pattern, black trainers, a grey shirt and a tan coloured military style utility vest over the top. Tribal style sleeve tattoos covered his arms and he had a single gold ear in his left ear.

    Sarah smiled and greeted him with a brief hug before turning back to Toby and introducing him. “Toby, this is Jared. He's what you might call our wheelman.” Jared grasped Toby's hand and shook it with a smile.

    “He's also our resident mechanical genius. Pretty much keeps everything here running.”

    “If its got wings, I can fly it. If its got wheels I can drive it. If it 'aint got neither I can still make it break the speed limit and evade the cops.” Jared boasted with a slight grin. “I saw how you handled that UniCop in the alleyway. Pretty cool. You ever play baseball?”

    “Er, no I was more of a hockey fan,” Toby replied, slightly confused at the sudden change of topic.

    “Pity, you've got a great pitching arm kid. Nailed that cop right in the face with that rock.”

    While they had been talking, the boy at the table pushed his chair back and moved over to the group. As he approached, Sarah rolled her eyes. “And this charming young man is...”

    “So this is the little runt whose arse we saved?” the boy interrupted looking Toby right in the eye in obvious challenge. To Toby's surprise he had a British accent.

    “As I was saying, this is Tommy and...” Sarah attempted to continue.

    “What's your problem huh?” Toby countered squaring up to Tommy. The two boys now stood only a few inches apart.

    “I can't believe we risked our lives for this ... this runt. I mean he's nothing more than a brainwashed arco-brat. Force fed that subliminal s**t they shovel out in the schools.”

    “Hey, maybe you should leave him...”Jared began although he didn't sound like he expected to finish the sentence before one of the two boys cut him off.

    “I don't have to stand here and listen to this.” Toby turned to walk away.

    Tommy laughed before continuing in a fake American accent. “Yeah, why don't go home and cry to mommy?”

    Toby stopped in his tracks, his back to Tommy. His shoulders hunched and his fists balled. He turned and faced the other boy, his face red. “What did you say?”

    “You heard me, why don't you just curl up on the floor again and cry.” He punctuated his statement with a sharp shove to the shoulder.

    Jared looked at Sarah and mouthed “here we go” before looking over at the man that had quietly entered the room at the start of the argument. The man appeared to be in his late twenties with short brown hair and a brown soul patch on his chin. He wore dark grey cargo pants, black combat boots and an open dark grey khaki jacket. On the right shoulder was a patch of the old US flag. Underneath the jacket was a simple white t-shirt. Leaning against the wall, he was watching the confrontation with bemused interest.

    “Touch me again, and you'll be sorry.” Toby said calmly.

    Tommy tried to shove him in the shoulder again but Toby batted the hand away. “Ooh, tough guy.”

    “Just back off scar face.” The instant Toby uttered those words he regretted them. Tommy's face flushed red with anger and lashed out with a punch to the face. A punch Toby caught instantly in a blur of motion. With his free hand he shoved Tommy in the chest forcing him back a meter. Without hesitation Tommy leapt forward aiming a kick at Toby's left side. The boy span to the side avoiding the blow and used the momentum to respond with a spin kick of his own. Tommy stopped the spin dead by grabbing on the foot with both hands. He lost his grip when Toby jumped back landing in a crouch. Tommy adopted a martial arts stance as Toby charged forward.

    As the two boys fought Sarah and Jared moved over to the man. “So Talbot,” Sarah began, “can those two actually hurt each other.”

    Talbot shrugged, “Short answer no. Long answer yes but not permanently.”

    “Where's Kai?” asked Jared.

    “He's out getting supplies. Its handy being the only one not wanted by the government for being a terrorist.”

    Toby and Tommy exchanged a flurry of punches and kicks. Both them seemed evenly matched. Tommy seemed to rely on pure hitting power where Toby was the more agile of the two. After a few minutes, both were sporting rapidly fading bruises but surprisingly few blows had connected.

    Talbot stepped away from the wall and whistled. “Ok you two, that's enough. Break it up.” Instantly Tommy somersaulted back from the, obviously showing off. His entire demeanour changed, all trace of hostility vanished. He held his hands up in a placating gesture.

    “Easy there mate, just testing ya,” he managed between breaths. Unlike Toby, Tommy was still trying to catch his breath. “Haven't had a work out like that in a long while.” Toby, a little confused, looked at the other boy who was now smiling. “Sorry about that whole cry baby thing, no hard feelings right?” He took a step forward hold his hand out.

    Toby, still a little wary, stepped forward and took the hand. “If you can forget about scar face thing then I guess we can call it even.”

    Tommy grinned, “Sure. Looks like I've finally found someone in this group worth sparring with. Now, if I'm not mistaken,” he continued while flicking a look at Talbot, “I'm about to be told to go and clean the hydroponic waste vats.” In response Talbot just raised an eyebrow in an unspoken order. Without complaint he made his way to the door. As he backed out he turned to Toby and raised his hand in mock salute.

    “Oh yeah, welcome to BetaForce.”