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RAVAGED PLANET:

THf BRAVf NEW WORLD PLAYER'S GUIDE

BY MATT fORBECK

CREDITS

Written and Designed by: Matt Forbeck

Editing: Hal Mangold

Cover: Paul Bonner

Cover Background: Zeke Sparkes

Interior Art: Don Hillsman, Michael Phillippi, Justin Long,

Eric Polak, Richard Pollard, and Curt Shoultz

Computer Coloring: Chuck Croft, Chris Impink, Zeke Sparkes, Matthew Tice

Graphic Design: Matt Forbeck and Zeke Sparkes

Proofreading: Ann Kolinsky and Pat Kolinsky

Special Thanks to: Amber Bucheit, Rachel Butterworth, Ken Carpenter, Frank Chafe, Martin Forbeck, Marcello Figueroa, Leticia Hayler, Michelle, Caden, and Shane Lacy Hensley, Christy and Jolm Hopler, Ann Kolinsky, Ray Lau, Jim Pinto, Dave Seay, Matt Tice, Jennifer Wick, Maureen Yates, John Zinser, and Jo1m and Mary Zinser.

Playtesting and Advice: Shane Lacy Hensley, Aaron McConnell, Hal Mangold, Ashe Marler, Zeke Sparkes, and John Zinser Dedicated to: Ann, the light of my life .

Pinnacle Entertainment Group, Inc.

PO. Box 10908

Blacksburg, VA 24062-0908

www.peginc.com

[email protected]

(800) 214-5645 (orders only)

Stop by www.peginc.com for regular, free updates! Printed in the USA.

Brave New World, Defiants, Defiance,

Bargainers, Patriot, Superior, Truth, the

Yankee, Triumph, Inc., Evil Unlimited,

delta, alpha, ovenant, Delta Prime,

and all character names and likenesses

depicted herein are Trademarks of

Pinnacle Entertainment Group, Inc.

© 1999 Pinnacle Entertainment Group,

Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Brave New World

created by Matt Forbeck.

TABLE Of CONTENTS

WELCOME TO DELTA TIMES .............. 4 LIVING IN AMERICA ..................... 12 Patriot's Journal: An Introduction ......... 5 Patriot's Journal: The Final Days ........ ... 6 June 16, 1999 ......... .. ........ 6 The Beginning ........ ........ 6 My Awakening ..... .......... 8 Drafted .......................... 11 Back to School .... ......... . 12 Delta Squadron .. .......... 13 Dallas .... ...... ................... 14 My Decision ............ .. .... 15 Regrets ........ .. .......... .. ..... 17 My Delta Prime Days .. 18 The Bicentennial Battle ................ .......... 20 The Cold War Heats Up .... ............... 21

Ufe in the Cold ........ ..... 22 The Great Mistake of '88 ........... 22 A Career Change .......... 24 Life on the Run .... .... ..... 25 Working for the Family .. .. ............. 26 Leaving the Family ...... 27 The Defiant Years .. ....... 31 Redemption .......... .. ...... 34 America, Right or Wrong .. .. .... 35 July 4,1999 ............... .. .. . 37 My Trial .......... ..... .......... 38 August 4, 1999 .. ...... .. ... .46

REQUIEM fOR PATRIOT................ 48 The Death of a Hero ... .49

CRESCENT CITy ............................ 54

Ufe in the Big City ....... 55

The Early Days .... .. ....... 56

The City Today ........ .. ... 58

The Government .... ...... 60

Major Buildings .. ........ .. 67

United States of Anarchy ............. .. . 73 America the Battered ... 74 Atlanta ... .... ...... .. .. .......... 75 Boston .... ........................ 76 Crescent City ........ ... ... .. 76 Dallas ............... .............. 77 Detroit .......... .... .. .... ........ 79 Denver .............. .. .... ....... 79 Los Angeles ........... .. ...... 80 Miami .......... ..... .. ........... 82 New York City .... ........ .. 83 Philadelphia .... ........ ..... .85 San Diego ................ .. .... 86

San Francisco ................ 87 Washington, DC ........... 88

The State of the Union . 90

AWORLD Of HURT ..................... 92 This Ravaged Planet .... 93 Africa .... ............ ...... ....... 93

Australia ............ ......... ... 94

Canada ...... ................ .. ... 96

China .... ... .. .................. .. 97

Europe ...................... ..... 98

Middle-East .......... .. .... 101

India .. ..................... ..... . 102

Japan .... .. ...................... 103

South and Central America .. ................. 104 Soviet Union .... ........... 106 The United Na tions ... 107



CHAPTER ONE:

HEW POWER PACKAGEs......... 109

The Power Packages .. 109

The Covenant .. ......... .. 110

Covenant ... .................. 117

Defender ...... ................ 123

Genius .......... ................ 123

Hot Shot .............. ........ 125

Screamer ........ .... ...... .... 125

Shrinker .. .............. .. ..... 126

Sneak .... .. .................. .... 126

Telekinetic .... .. ... .. ........ 127

Teleporter .. .. ................ 128

Tough ............ .... ........... 128

ARCHETYPES ........

m ...................

THE GUIDE'S HANDBOOK ....

u .....

129

145

CHAPTER TWO:

THE TRUTH Of THE MATTER .. 141

Guides Only ................ 147

Patriot's Journal ... .. .... 147

Death of a Hero .... .... .. 149 Crescent City ............. . 150

United States of Anarchy ...... ........ 151

Ravaged Planet .......... 152

THE AUTHOR'S

AHERWORD .......................... 155

Wh a t" s In a N arne ?...... 155

What's the

Game About? ... .. .. .. 155

My Thoughts .... .. ........ 156

Sources of Inspiration 156

Many Thanks .. ............ 157

INDEX........................................ 159

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WELCOME TO DELTA TIMES

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PATRIOT'S JOURNAL:

AN INTRODUCTION

If you've been living under a rock in some God-forsaken part of the third world for the past few months, let me fill you in on the biggest bit of news since the Great Mistake. The Defiant known as Patriot was captured in the streets of Crescent City this spring while attempting to rescue a newly awakened young delta woman from a Delta Prime recruitment team. This was the kind of thing Patriot did all the time. Ever since he left Delta Prime back in the late '80s, he's struggled to redeem himself in the eyes of the Defiant community. For doing so, the goverrunent has branded him a villain of the first order and spared no expense or effort in hunting him down. Despite that, whether through luck or planning, he always managed to stay at least three steps ahead of them. Unfortuna tely, this June, his long, one-man assault on Kennedy's America came to an end. Thankfully, the young woman got away. Patriot would have wanted it that way. He was never afraid to risk his own freedom for that of innocents. This time, though, his luck finally ran out.

My fRlfND THf HfRO As the editor of the Delta Times, I've known Patriot for many years. When I was younger, I remember hearing about his exploits on behalf of Delta Prime. Even then, long before he joined the Defiance, I admired his heroic efforts to help those in need, whether they were deltas or regs .

When I heard Patriot had left Delta Prime, I cheered, although quietly. Lots of people had left the Primers in the past, mostly moles sent to infiltrate th.e Defiance. I said a silent prayer that thIS wasn't the case here. When I finally had a chance to work with Patriot, it was easy to see where the fire in his belly came from. This was a man who believed in America. I'm not talking about the America you and I grew up in, the fract~red nation that's torn itself apart WIth fear and loathing. I mean the America we all dream about, the one our teachers told us about in school, the country the framers of the Constitution always intended for their descendants-both literal and figurative-to inherit. Here are some words of Thomas Jefferson's that Patriot was fond of quoting: "We hold these truths to be self­ evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness .-That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among M en, deriving their just powers from the consent of the govern ed,-That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to eff ect their Safety and Happiness. /I

You might recognize this quote. It's from the Declaration of Independence.

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PATRIOT'S JOURNAL:

TH£ fiNAL DAYS

JUN£ 16, 1999

It's been a danm good run, but it looks like it's finally coming to an end. Here I am, rotting in this cell in New Alcatraz in the center of Chicago Bay. I've been in a lot of hard situations so far, but nothing this bleak. I'm not a man of words, but I've decided to resort to them now. In the end, they're all I have left. The warden came down to talk to me yesterday. Making this record was his idea. He thinks I'm going to give him something he can turn around and use against me in court, I'm sure. Not that it matters. They've already got plenty of evidence. I'm headed for a face down with a firing squad either way. I wonder how many bullets it's going to take? I'd guess that not too long after ~'m turned into fertilizer, this record wlll get published. If the feds print it, you can be sure tha t a lot of it's going to be rewritten. I can only hope that Truth gets her hands on a copy before it's mangled by the "free press." People deserve to hear the truth. Of course, what I'm writing here may not be the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I only know what I know, and that's my truth. That's what I'm trying to set down here. If I hadn't been captured by that Delta Prime strike force yesterday, I'd still be out there fighting for the truth instead of trying to write about it. I'm done with that now. If you're reading this, the fight is up to you.

Hamel

TH£ B£GINNING

Where should I start? I know, I know: the beginning. But which beginning? Do you care that I was a scrawny kid from Chicago before I became a delta? Do you want to know what it was like to fight alongside Superior and the rest of Delta Squadron in the early days of my career? Or what it felt like to miss out on the Bicentennial Battle? Or what it was that finally got me to toss aside all my years of senrice with Delta Prime to join the Defiance? I'll get to all that in a minute. First, let me tell you about the Yankee. When I was a kid, he was my first and greatest hero. Joe DiMaggio, Bob Cousy-you can keep them. Sure, I loved sports as much as any other red­ blooded American boy, but the deltas always did it for me, and the Yankee, in his star- spangled costume, he was the best. Yeah, looking back on it, the costume was pretty damn goofy, but it was a product of the times, a more idealistic era. Most of the heroes dressed that way in those days. You could always tell the good guys. They were the ones in bright, primary colors, wearing symbols that hit you like a club. Of course, the bad guys were almost as goofy. I mean, the worst villain of all time was a guy named the Devastator. How corny can you get? I know, I've been guilty of that myself. When I started out, I was a bright-eyed kid with delusions of bringing Americans-style justice to the world. I believed in my country, right or wrong. That's why I called myself Patriot.

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RAISED BY UNCLl SAM From a very young age, America was the most important thing in my life. My father had been killed storming the beaches of Normandy, while I was just a baby, and my mother passed away from grief soon after. I was made a ward of the state and turned over to St. Savio's Orphanage in Chicago. So even from the beginning, the feds weren't just my government. They were my parents. When I was a kid taking classes at St. Savio's school, the civics classes were always my favorite. I memorized the entire Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, not to mention the Gettysburg Address. I knew their words backward and forward, and I vowed to live my life by them.

Maybe that's why the Yankee was always my favorite. Most kids my age worshipped Superior instead. And why not? No one ever beat Superior. Sure, they might get away for a while, but in the end, he always got his man. To me, though, Superior's superiority was always a bit suspect. It's easy to be sure of yourself when you can kick anyone's ass. How much bravery does it take to waltz into a hail of bullets when you know you can't be hurt? Just because he was lucky enough to be given such incredible powers, he was the idol of millions, the Atlas with America on his shoulders. Me, I stuck by the Yankee. In those days, he was getting older, but he never seemed to let it slow him down. Sure, he was strong and fast and he hauled in more than his share of evil deltas, but for him it was a real risk.

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Remember that time back in '62 when he got shot? We almost lost him that day, and it shook me to the bone. While he was recovering, I realized that this was a man who laid his life on the line every time he put on his costume. Tha t earned my respect. When he got back on the streets as soon as the doctors would let him, that got my admiration. When Chicago disappeared, America mourned the loss of Superior most of all. I wept for the Yankee.

It was my last year at St. Savio's. Graduation was coming up in a couple months, and I was due to be kicked out on my ass to make room for the next class of parentless punks. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, but the Army was going to be waiting there for me as soon as I stepped off the stage at the graduation ceremony. Just like these days, back then no one ever got out of serving his four years. And this was back in '62, before the DRA was even a twinkle of a bill in JFK's eye.

My AWAKENING

AfATEfUL ENCOUNTER

Just about every aspect of my career as a delta's owes something to the Yankee, right down to my red, white, and blue mask. Even though he never knew it, he even had a sort of hand in my awakening. Well, it was less of a hand and more of an inspiration, but I was a pretty impressionable kid. That's what we call it when a delta finally gets his powers: awakening. According to the eggheads I've talked to, a good chunk of the planet's population has the potential to become a delta. It's locked away in our DNA, that code of life that tells us who we are. At the moment a delta awakens, the DNA morphs into something new. Of course, not everyone realizes that potential. It takes a lot to get those acid chains fluxing-usually some kind of near-death experience-and most candidates don't pass that final exam. In my case, I was hustling through downtown Chicago, on my way back to the orphanage from a date. It was past the nationwide curfew for kids, and I knew I was going to get it from Sister Mary Victoria. And if the police caught me on the street, it was going to be worse.

As I jogged through the nearly abandoned streets, I heard a choked scream from up ahead. I turned the corner, and I spied four people standing under the glow of an old streetlamp. Three of them were a family: a mother and father in their 50s and a boy not much younger than me. As I later found out, these were the Billingtons, a wealthy family that had been downtown to catch a production of Camelot . They were on the way back to their car, and they'd taken a wrong turn. At the time, they didn't realize how wrong the turn would be. The fourth person was a man named Wilbur Jeffries. In those days, we'd have called Jeffries a hobo or a bum. He was as homeless as they come. One of those sad and lonely people that somehow fall through the cracks. Jeffries was also a delta with a power he barely knew how to control, and he was using it to rob the Billingtons. The awakening doesn't always come to those who deserve it. If Jeffries had been able to pull himself together long enough to approach the proper people, he could have mastered his powers and turned his life around. Instead, he was wasting his abilities on petty crime.

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To this day, Jeffries just boggles my mind. I mean, I can understand someone who can make his body parts explode using it to rob banks or mastermind plots to take over the world. This Jeffries guy, though, all he wanted was enough cash to pick up a bottle of cheap scotch. In his constantly intoxicated state, it never occurred to Jeffries to knock over a liquor store. Instead, he was going to mug an innocent family. Jack Billington IV, the father, was doing his best to protect his wife and kid, but he saw that Jeffries was agitated, so he was trying to talk some calm into him. Apparently he spent his last moments doing that instead of reaching for his wallet, and the money didn't show up fast enough for Jeffries' taste.

Jeffries' temper wasn't the only thing about him that was unstable. Billington reached out a hand to calm the mugger down, and Jeffries stepped forward and poked the well-dressed man in the chest with a grimy fist. Jeffries' hand went off like a gunshot, and a gaping hole appeared in Billington's chest. From where I stood, with Jeffries' back to me, it looked like the greasy man in the tattered coat had just shot the sharp-looking man dead.

fiNEST HOUR OR BIGGEST MISIAK£? Barely even pausing to think "What would the Yankee do?", I sprinted straight for the killer. Looking back on it, it was one of the dumbest things I ever did in my life. I attribute some of it to my near­ worship of people like the Yankee.

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Hamel

After hearing story after story about their bravery in the face of incredible odds-all in the name of saving their fellow Americans-I couldn't see myself doing any thing less. I was 18 years old. Like most men that age, I was confident in m y immortality. I was going to take this murderer down and save the day. I never gave it a second thought. I can only guess what went through the Cynthia Billington's head in those last moments. There she was, standing there with her teenage son behind her. Her husband lay dead at her feet, and their attacker stood there in front of them, staring at a smoking stump where his hand used to be. And then this idiot kid runs out of nowhere to tackle the bastard. Honestly, it was the turning point in my life. I hit Jeffries from behind and just to one side, knocking him awa y from Cynthia and young Jack and wrapping my arms around him, reaching for the gun I thought he had. Mother and son took the hint and ran for safety, he pulling her along as she tripped along after him, screaming for help . Meanwhile, I wrestled Jeffries over onto his back. I hadn't found the gun yet, which scared the hell out of me. Sure the man was going to pump me full of bullets, I laid into him with both fists. A few frantic swings later, I had pulped the man's face, and I still wasn' t dead. Still sitting on the man, I grabbed him by the front of his filthy shirt and looked around for the gun. That's when I saw the stump of his hand, still smoking even then. Shocked by the sight, I goggled at the man for a moment. As I looked into his mad eyes, he grinned up at me, spat out a tooth, and said, "Boom."

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1m: AfURMATH The explosion shattered every window on the street and left a crater in the asphalt like a meteor had landed there. Bricks fell from the facades of the buildings. The streetlights popped like overfilled balloons. In short, it was a disaster. I came to in the front of a darkened drug store across the street from the crater. I was lying in a heap of broken bottles of lotions, potions, and pills. The sirens and the flashing lights woke me up. By all rights, I should have been dead, dead, dead. I was covered with bruises and cuts from the glass 1'd landed on, but I was breathing just fine. I struggled to my knees and peered out the broken window. The street was filled with Chicago police in their old black- and-white squad cars. They'd cordoned off both ends of the block and were poking around, interviewing people, and trying to piece together what had happened. Jack the V and his widowed mother were off to one side, tears spilling down their bloodied cheeks, the red and blue lights strobing across their faces. A detective was asking them questions, but it didn't look like he was getting much out of them. They were in shock, emotionally and physically. There were beat cops poking their noses into different places on the street, making sure everyone was all right. For a moment I wondered why they hadn't come into the shop to check up on me. After all, the place was a complete wreck. Then J realized that every place on the street was a wreck. They just hadn't gotten to picking through the closed storefronts yet.



At the time, I didn't really know what had happened-I just thanked God I was alive-but I was dead sure that if I ended up going back to St. Savio's in a squad car, Sister Vic would toss me out of the school right then and there. I was still hoping to get my diploma, so I let myself out the back door of the pharmacy and slipped off into the night.

DRAFTED

When I got to St. Savio's, Sister Vic was up and waiting for me, her face beet-red beneath the white halo of her wimple. I told her I'd gotten into a fight, which was close enough to the truth that I didn't bother confessing it as a sin after mass the next day. She gave me the tongue-lashing of my life, but none of it hurt any worse than the bruises I was carrying. Two months after that, I graduated from St. Savio's, and sure enough, Uncle Sam was there before my tasseled cap even touched the ground. I was drafted into the Army, and during my physical, the Army doctor realized there was something different about me. For one, every time the nurse tried to give me a shot, the needle bent or broke. The first time it happened the doctor chewed the woman ou t for being incompetent. After the second time, he pushed her aside and told her he'd handle it himself. The third time, he stared at the broken needle and then at me, then murmured to the nurse, "Get me the colonel." An hour later, a pair of MPs escorted me into Colonel Drake's office. He gave me the lowdown on who I was and what was going to happen to me from there on out. I was a delta, and as a

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delta, I was going to be assigned to the Delta Academy, effective immediately, as in right then and now. The next morning, I was on a plane for Washington. This was back before the passage of the Delta Registration Act, although only by less than two years. If tha t kind of thing happened these days, I'd have been tossed in jail for failing to register. If I'd been lucky, someone might have believed that I really didn't know I'd become a delta until that moment in the doctor's office. Otherwise, I'd have been sent to the Fortress for sure. Maybe I'd have even been transferred to New Alcatraz eventually and ended up right here just the same. Of course, I'm not looking at life in prison this time around. No, the only penalty for my crimes-such as they are-is death.

BACK TO SCHOOL

As it was, I was bundled onto the next troop transport back to Chicago, and I reported for duty at the Delta Academy the next day. Since I already had my high-school diploma, I wasn't required to take any of the regular classes, but I was put through a crash­ course in how to handle my powers. After extensive testing, the quacks at the academy's infirmary determined that my skin had gotten tough enough to bounce a low-caliber bullet off of. Also, I could fire blasts of plasma energy out of my fists . Not a bad package overall. They had just the training regimen already set up for me, and I started in on it right away. I remember my days at the academy fondly. When I got there, I was a scared kid, new to my powers, and all alone against the rest of the world. At the

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academy, I found a bunch of other scared kids doing their best to keep moving in a world that had suddenly been turned upside down. To this day, some of them are my closest friends. My coaches there worked me like a three-legged mule, but they taught me a lot. I think they'd call it tough love," without any of that love stuff. These days, life at the academy's a lot more rigid than it was then. I was in a crash course for deltas discovered during their draft physical. These days, if you' re found out that way, you've got a one-way ticket to the Fortress. The only students the academy gets are those who tum themselves in right away- or who are turned in by their parents. Since Delta Academy students are by definition minors, they often aren't held responsible for not registering themselves. Their parents are. These days, more than one student studying at the academy has to send letters home to a federal pen. II

IHTfR DUAHfY Anyhow, the academy's where I met Delaney Cadre, the woman who would one day be my wife. And yes, she was in Chicago the day the Devastator destroyed it. Remember- before when I said I cried for the Yankee on that day? Well, I mourned the loss of a lot of friends on that day, but none more than Delaney. She was my life. Delaney was a senior a t the Academy while I was there. We were sparring partners for a brief while, and we even had a date or two, but we knew it couldn't last. Soon enough, the coaches told the Army I was ready, and off I went.

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DILTA SQUADRON

Ever since its founding in World War II, Delta Squadron had a reputation of having the best and brightest deltas in its ranks. Those are the top-ranked deltas, of course, the ones the public saw. I was a grunt, just another rookie hoping to make a name for himself among the greatest deltas of all time. In those days, Superior was the de facto leader of Delta Squadron, despite the fact he was outranked by Yankee. Even though the Yankee was nominally in charge of us all, he was in his 50s then, just a bit older than I am now. He was past his prime, and he knew it. He'd given over the position of ranking field commander to the seemingly ageless Superior, contenting himself with taking a strategic position behind the scenes instead.



Anyhow, I stepped into uniform all starstruck by the names I was going to get to work with. In addition to the Yankee and Superior, the Silver Ghost was still kicking around (in a semiretired, advisory capacity), plus Warband, the Old Soldier, Mary Hartless, and Jack Magruder were team leaders there, and they were in their pnme. I was looking forward to working with them all. I thanked my lucky stars for giving me my powers, for leading me into such a life. I had no idea what I'd gotten myself into.

WAR IS HUL The fact is that Delta Squadron, like most military institutions, is in the business of war.

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Hamel

After Superior put a sudden end to World War II, it quickly became clear that America was the superpower in the world, in more ways than one. We tossed the noninterference Monroe doctrine out the window and quickly got involved in every government you could think of. We were the policemen of the world . Most people think of that as a figure of speech, and for most Americans it is. Not for us in Delta Squadron. We got sent off to prop up every little petty dictator in the world, anyone who paid lip service to the idea of democracy as opposed to communism, even if they were ruthless fascists. You've got to remember, this was before we had a ruthless dictator of our own. The idea that freedom-loving Americans were willing to fight, die, and kill to keep oppressors in office was a bit strange to some of us then­ certainly to me---but I was a soldier, and I supported my country, right or wrong. I did what I was told. In the end, we kept the Soviets out of a good portion of South America and most of Africa and Europe. We had to sell our souls to do it, but KeIUledy told us it was worth it. We believed him.

DALLAS

Do you remember where you were on November 22, 1963? If not, you were probably too young. There's no other excuse. The day Jackie KeIUledy died was a turning point for our nation. Up until then, we were still a democracy, at least in name. Although it wasn't official until many months later, that idea died in Dallas with the First Lady.

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I'm not going to go over that story here again. You can read the Warren Commission Report if you like. As far as I can tell, it's pretty accurate. A team of Dreadnauts zoomed in and took out the Presidential motorcade before the Delta Squadron soldiers working with the Secret Service could even react. Afterward, Superior hunted each one of them down. Two of them­ Donna and Dennis Krueger-didn't survive arrest. Of the three others, Bill Houseman is doing time in solitary confinement in the Fortress. Jack Ruby got killed by another prisoner soon after being transferred over to New Alcatraz. No one shed a tear. To this day, Lee Harvey Oswald is still at large. Delta Squadron-and later Delta Prime-claims to have nearly captured him a dozen times, but somehow he always gets away. These days, he's got to be at least as old as I am-probably more. But he's still out there, and I'm finally in here.

MISSING THE ArnON Ironic, isn't it? I was nowhere near Dallas that day. I was part of the occupation force in Cuba that had put down Castro's attempted rebellion. We were stuck there in the Caribbean, making sure that Fulgencio Batista Zaldivar kept his job as leader of the country. The funny part was that Batista actually called on the US for help. We helped him out all right, but I don't think he was too excited about the price he had to pay. Either way, at the end of the day, he was out of power. Sure, once we took care of the rebels, he was still sitting in his office in the capitol, but it didn't really matter. From that point on Washington was calling all the shots.

Of course, just because we'd captured Castro and disbanded his revolutionary force years earlier didn't mean we could go home. The Cuban people were discontented for a reason, and that still hadn't been resolved. To this day, we've still got forces there centered in Guantanamo Bay. No matter what Kennedy may try to tell you, people want to be free-and they're willing to fight for it, no matter how long it takes. Even so, I mourned for the First Lady-our last First Lady, it seems­ right alongSide the rest of the country. And the rest of the world, for that matter. In retrospect, it was Jackie that held Jack Kennedy together. Once she was gone, he fell apart, and so did the rest of the country.

My DICISION

It wasn't long after JFK recovered from the "cowardly delta attack" that the Delta Registration Act was rammed through Congress. As a member of Delta Squadron, I was one of the first people asked to register my powers. Since I was already working for the government, it didn't seem like much of a choice, but I still wrestled with it. The patriotic boy I'd once been knew I was giving up some of my most cherished Constitutional rights when I signed on that dotted line, but at the time I was prepared to make that sacrifice. It was for the greater good, I told myself. There were deltas running wild out there, bad ones. If I wasn't part of the solution, I was part of the problem. At least that's what my CO in Delta Squadron told me. You might have heard of him. His name was Superior.

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THE HORNS Of ADILEMMA When that red, white, and blue soldier put that dreaded piece of paper in front of me, it already had all my vital data on it. All it needed was my John Hancock. The government knew all about who I was, of course. When I got my security clearance for Delta Squadron, the FBI had crawled into every dark corner of my life, and they'd pronounced me clean as a shiny, new, silver whistle. Just about everyone I knew of in Delta Squadron, all my delta buddies, had already registered without even asking many questions. To them, this was just a formality. To me, though, it meant something. Sure, there wasn't any direct harm in me admitting to information about myself that the government already

had. But it was the first encroachment on my rights as a human being. It was the first step toward officially segregating hvo peoples that were really one. Once that happened, it would be a simple matter to keep chipping away at those rights until l ­ or those like me-suddenly had no protections at all. But at the time, it seemed harmless. And Superior personally asked me to comply with the law-this in a country in which I'd sworn to uphold the laws and even enforce them. This was the man who'd killed Hitler, who'd single- handedly put an end to World War II. He was the foundation of America as I knew it, my beloved country. I took the pen he handed me, and I did something I'd always regret. I signed the damned thing.

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REGRETS

Yeah, like the song says, I've had a few, but some of mine are worth mentioning. Right after I registered, I felt a great relief, as if the world had suddenly been lifted from my shoulders. I should have known it was only repositioning itself before it really came crashing down. Soon after it became apparent that only about 50% of the delta population in the United States was going to register voluntarily, Delta Prime was formed. Its mission: to protect the United States against delta threats both foreign and domestic. Who else was better to police the deltas than the deltas themselves? At least that was the theory. Given how well the regular government agencies had handled the situation over the years, it seemed like the right thing to do. At least, the thought went, we couldn't do any worse. Little did we know how wrong we were. In the end, all we did was escalate the situation to a fever pitch. A lot of innocents have died in the Delta Wars, as they've been called over the years by the less-judicious members of the press. And it's at least partly our fault. Sure, there are lots of deltas out there who are just crooks who happened to luck into their powers, but we didn't stop with them. No, we had to tum. every innocent kind and hard workmg American who somehow ended up with powers into a criminal just for wanting to live their own life. Most of these people didn't ask for their powers. Given half a chance, they'd get rid of them forever. It's just not that simple.

My NEW EMPLOYER Unlike Delta Squadron, Delta Prime came directly under the jurisdiction of the Department of Justice. Back in those days, it was headed up by Attorney General Bobby Kennedy, none other than Big Jack's very own little brother. That particular move pissed off J. Edgar Hoover, then the head of the FBI, like you wouldn't believe. His G- men. were now second-class citizens when It came to federal law enforcement, and he didn't like it one bit. Rumor has it he spent the next several years building up his own secret FBI delta tea.m set to take his side in any open conflICt. In fact, rumors persist to this day that Hoover was behind RFK's assassination in '68. Sure, a delta by the name of Sirhan Sirhan did the actual deed, but he was blasted apart by delta Secret Service agents before Bobby's body even hit the ground. We may never know who was really behind the attack. Either way, you can be sure that Hoover shed no tears the day Bobby Kennedy was put in his grave. Hoover or no, as soon as my term with Delta Squadron was up in '66, I was asked to join Delta Prime. I'd had enough of military life, I told myself. Putting down insurrectionists in foreign lands had always left a bad taste in my mouth. With the draft, though, I hadn't really had much of a choice. It was Delta Squadron or Leavenworth. I chose freedom over jail. I was only 18. How could I have known there was any other choice? Since then, I've learned a lot about life. It's not so much about taking the choices that are presented to you as it is in coming up with your own course of action.

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THf NOT -SO-NOBLf £XPfRIMfNT Joining Delta Prime was pretty much the same kind of choice. Again, it took Superior himself to convince me that joining up was the right thing to do. In the two years the DRA had been in existence, the Primers had only managed to get an estimated 25% of the unregistered deltas to change their tune-forcefully or not. The remaining three quarters of the rogue delta population was now firmly entrenched in their lawlessness, or so it was described to me. It was the government's responsibility to protect its people against any threat, from without or within. Given the number of delta-related disasters we'd seen over the past two years, it was pretty obvi~us the people needed protecting. I sIgned up. I told myself it was the right thing to do. I could protect the innocent and drag in the guilty. Never mind the only thing some "villains" were guilty of was not complying with the Delta Registration Act.

WORKING FOR THf MAN I also told myself that the best way to effect change is from within. If there was no way to fight City Hall, I sure wasn't going up against the federal gov.e rnment. That would mean going agamst everything I'd fought for and believed in my whole life. It would also mean going against Superior, a man who'd become a real father figure to me, the orphan from Chicago. I knew he had his own agenda, but I trusted him as much as I ever trusted anyone. I told myself I wasn't being cowardly. I was being practical. I didn't believe it either.

My DILlA PRIMI DAYS So I put up with it. I had my job, and I did it. While mobsters ran amok around the country, while the Catholic Church kept the masses opiated with all their talk from the Pope's Covenant of peaceful coexistence between deltas and regs and uniting against larger, common foes, I was busy hunting down and locking up dangerous deltas," some of which were barely out of diapers. Bringing in the kids was always the worst. It wasn't their fault they hadn't registered. Their parents just didn't want them hauled off to the Delta Academy, vvhere they'd never see them again. The problem, of course, was that the law didn't care. As a duly deputized representative of that law, I couldn't care either. I wasn't allowed to . /I

TRUTH AND (ONSfOUfNCfS Did it really matter that those kids were being torn from the only homes they'd ever known to spend their childhood as wards of the state? Did it matter that their parents weren't going to be able to see their kids again? Not because the academy doesn't allow vi itors. It does. No, the parents were going to jail for harboring a fugitive. If they were lucky, they'd get out in time to see their children graduate from Delta Academy. Then they'd have all of about three days before the kid was shipped off to do her manda tory four years in Delta Squadron. N i~e kn~wing you, kid. Don' t forget to wnte. Still, I closed my mind and h~rdened my heart and did the job wIthout question. That was my life, and it wasn't a bad one either.

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DELANEY AGAIN I met Delaney again in Delta Prime, and we got assigned to the same unit. Within a few weeks we were dating. A few months later, we were engaged. We were married within the year. Those were years of bliss. I was young and in love, married to a wonderful woman. I had put the doubts of my job behind me, and I was doing the right thing to bring peace and prosperity to my country. I was willing to die for my country. More to the point, I was ready to kill for it.

DOING MY JOB Despite how strange that kind of life might seem to you, it wasn't all tearing innocent children away from their parents. Delaney and I actually worked in the Special Forces division of Delta

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Prime, the blue shirts. Unlike the Primers in red, we didn't spend our days tracking down people whose only crime was not registering as deltas. No, we spent our days investigating delta crimes and then bringing in the mad dogs who corrunitted them. There's not a cell block in New Alcatraz that doesn't have someone on it who I put away. And nearly all of them deserve to be there. For hauling in the terrorists and the criminals, I feel no shame. Being a delta might make you faster, stronger, or tougher than most people, but it doesn't make you any better than anyone else. If you were a greedy, murderous bastard before your awakening, then afterward you're still a greedy, murderous bastard. You're just more dangerous than ever.

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THE BICENTENNIAL BATTLE

Actually, doing my job and doing it right is why I missed the Bicentennial Battle. Delaney and I had been investigating a series of mysterious drowning murders in the Arizona desert-which is what made them so damned mysterious-when I found myself on the wrong end of a blast of water strong enough to knock me into a wall and crack my skull. Fortunately, Delaney cornered my assailant and cleaned his clock. It wasn't the first time I'd been hurt in the line of duty, and it wouldn't be the last. Over the years, I'd almost come to expect it. With the success rate of delta healers these days, especially those who are part of the Covenant, breaking a bone or two is no big deal. You're pretty much fine unless some part of your body suddenly goes missing or you're DOA. I was under the care of a delta healer in Tempe when the word that the Devastator had taken over Chicago came down. Delaney was on the next flight out. I didn't even ask her not to go. Nothing would have stopped her.

SIDHIH£D The healer told me that because of my wounds I wouldn't be going anywhere for a couple days. Delaney assured me that she could handle herself just fine, and I believed her. From what it sounded like, most of Delta Prime and even a number of do­ gooder Defiants had taken up the Devastator's challenge. For Delaney, this was her chance to finally work alongside the legends she'd always heard about.

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I'd been one of the lucky ones, top of my class. In Delta Squadron, I had been part of Superior's handpicked team, the people assigned to the most dangerous missions of all. Even as a "mere"-I always preferred "pure"­ delta, my skills helped me stack up well against some of the alphas. Delaney had been good herself, but as one of the Bargainers, she wasn't really suited for frontline battles. She was one hell of an investigator though. Anyhow, Delaney hadn't even met Superior or most of the rest of the members of myoid squad. This was her shot.

KISS IT GOOD-BYE I never should have let her go. I was still in the hospital when the reports about the Chicago disaster started streaming in. At first, no one could tell what happened. All communications in and out of the city were just cut off. Nobody knew the city was gone. That was simply inconceivable. Pictures of the damage pretty much fit that description too. They were just impossible to believe. The destruction could be summed up in one word: total. I've seen pictures of ground zero at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Chicago was much, much worse. Literally millions of innocents died in mere moments, most of who never even knew they were in danger. We lost the Yankee. We lost Superior. We lost most of Delta Prime and Delta Squadron, including just about every good-hearted alpha on the planet. And I lost Delaney. I still remember her last words to me: "See you on the other side." If I get the death sentence I'm expecting, I'll finally get the chance.

THI (OLD WAR HIATS UP

The Bicentennial Battle was the worst disaster in the history of humanity, but the destruction wasn't over yet. The disappearance of the most powerful people on the planet created a power vacuum . Suddenly the USA wasn't the home of the most dangerous person on the planet. The balance of power tilted back and forth like a seesaw in a hurricane. At first it looked like the Soviets were the new world power, then the Chinese, then India or even France or Britain. Of course, the US was right in there with the rest of them, fighting like a punch­ drunk boxer that had taken the sucker punch of his life.

My LlH, My WORK Those were strange days, but I threw myself into them-hard. I suppose I was trying to get over my grief, but this was a cause I could get behind. America was no longer the unassailable fortress it had once been. Before the Bicentennial Battle, no one would have dared attack America for fear of Delta Squadron wiping them off the map . All you had to do was look a t Korea or Vietnam to see what our deltas could do. Now, with the alphas-the cream of our delta crop-gone, we'd been cut down to size, and everyone wanted a shot at us. Kennedy was the worst. He absolutely refused to believe that the country he was in charge of was suddenly knocked from the top of the world. He seconded a lot of us from Delta Prime into the CIA. If we weren't the undisputed top country in the delta race anymore, we had the best espionage organiza tion by far.

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Of course, the rest of the world wasn't going to stand by and watch the CIA run rampant over the entire planet. It was a golden age of spy versus counterspy. It seemed like every month or so you'd hear about some spy or another getting caught in a foe's country and being executed for his trouble. Well, I heard about it, but then, I was on the inside. After the Bicentennial Battle, I had what the shrinks called "survivor's guilt." I knew all about it and why it was irrational and all that. I just needed a way to rechannel it. When Kennedy asked Primers interested in "serving overseas," we all knew what that meant. I didn't just step forward. I ran.

LIfE IN THE (OLD Technically speaking, I was still part of Delta Prime, but I answered to the CIA. If you haven't figured it out by now, the CIA isn't a nice bunch of guys-more like a gang of thugs with the power of the US government behind it. Sure, most of the directors over the years had the best interests of the country at heart, but they really didn't care who got hurt in the process. So hurt a lot of people, I did. The rationale was that the communists were out to bury us. Belt Kruschev actually came right out and said it. It was our job to make life at home safe for the innocents there. If some of us had to get our hands dirty to leave the rest of the country with a clean conscience, that was a price we were willing to pay. Of course, we weren't the ones who actually had to cough up. That duty fell to the people we captured, tortured, or killed.

Hame l

GHTING My HANDS DIRTY That's a part of my life I'm not terribly proud of. I managed to avoid a lot of the wetwork myself, sticking mostly to the espionage side of things, but there were times I got blood on my hands . When it comes down to killing a man or spending the rest of your life in a Soviet gulag, the choice becomes a lot easier than you might think. I spent the next 10 years jetting around the globe, infiltrating different government and criminal organizations wherever I went. It was a real James Bond kind of life-without the pretty w omen or the ama zing gadgets. kay, there were some beautiful women, and some of the people I worked with had some truly astonishing pieces of technology, but that's not the point. The point is that there was a lot of work for a spy with armorlike skin and an undetectable weapon in the form of a handblast as deadly as any gun. Like the song says, I got around. In the end, I think I did some good for America, even though it was at the expense of our rivals around the world. And that's enough said about that.

THE GREAT MISTAKE Of '88 I worked for the CIA for 12 years. I wouldn't say I was happy, but it took my mind off the pain I was still suffering from the fallout of the Bicentennial Battle. Chicago was gone, but Crescent City was thrown up on the rim of the Windy City's watery grave like some kind of skyscrapered phoenix. We had the Russkies on the ropes, and it looked like the Iron Curtain might crumble at any time. In the intelligence community, we were riding high.

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1m LAnST RUSSIAN RfVOLUTION It all fell apart in '88. That's when the Soviet Union really started to dissolve. The long-term effects of communism and decades of steady battering from us capitalist pigs finally caught up with the country, and the people demanded a change in leadership. They got it. Unfortunately, they got the leader they truly deserved in General Mikhail Tretyak. "Mighty Misha," as they called him, took over the country in a bloody military coup in which he personally killed every member of the politburo that wouldn't pledge his unswerving support to the new regime . He was, you see, a delta, and with the support of Crimson Pride behind him, there was no stopping him. Tretyak lived only by one rule: Might makes right. And he had a lot of might on his side. Within weeks, Tretyak had the mighty Soviet Empire rolling along like the troubles of the early '80s had only been a speed bump. It seemed he kept the whole thing going through only the force of his own iron will. Without him, the Soviet Union would have crumbled.

IHf RUSSIAN SOLUTION Of course, that meant Tretyak had to die. The CIA's long-standing policy had been that it was in America's best interest to keep matters in the Soviet Union as unstable as possible. The thinking was that, as long as the Russians were busy dealing with problems in their own backyard, they wouldn't have time to be a threat to us. Tretyak had put an end to all that, so we needed to put an end to him.

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That's what we in the trade call a tragic miscalculation. The CIA made a clumsy attempt to assassinate the Soviet leader. The backup plan was supposed to put the blame for the botched killing on Beijing, pitting the Soviets against the Red Chinese. Best case, we waxed the premier. Worst case, the Chinese took the fall instead. Of course, we were wrong.

THE REAL MISTAKE Not only did our field agents blow the assassination, they literally got their heads handed to them by Tretyak's personal guard. Our agents were deltas themselves, and no slouch at their jobs either, but they never really had a chance. Worse yet, the Soviet investigation managed to pretty quickly pierce the facade pointing at Beijing. It wasn' t long before Mighty Misha knew who had written his name on the bullets his would-be assassins had been carrying. Tretyak was mad as hell, and he wanted to make a point. We even gave him the excuse when a number of Delta Primers were caught in Chernobyl right before the reactor melted down. Before cooler heads could prevail, he actually ordered the launch of a limited nuclear strike against the United States. While the first missile was still in the air we retaliated in kind. When the gl~wing dust finally settled, millions were incinerated, and millions more lingered in radioactive suffering before giving up the ghost. In the Soviet Union, Kiev, and Minsk were gone. In America, San Francisco and Atlanta were inaugurated as nuclear graveyards for untold numbers of innocents. The world wept bitter tears and dreamed of vengeance.

ACAREER CHANGE

The Great Mistake was the last straw for me. Kennedy trea ted the American public like mushrooms: He kept them in the dark and fed them shit. Most people thought the US had been the innocent victims of an unprovoked Soviet attack, and no lying, pinko commie was going to tell them different. Of course, that's just what Kennedy told the reporters, which they turned around and fed to the public. I knew better. It had been bad enough when Chicago was destroyed while I lay healing in a hospital, but at least then I'd been innocent myself. This time, that wasn' t the case. I'd hadn't been one of the agents that had set up the Tretyak assassination attempt, but I damn well could have been. If the CIA had sent me there­ and if my Russian had been a little better, they might have-I'd have gone. It could just as easily have been my fault. As it was, I felt guilty as sin. While rescue workers were swarming around San Francisco, Houston, and Atlanta, I was making up my mind to leave Delta Prime, to join the Defiance Movement, to go rogue. In short, to betray my beloved country.

MOVING ON I didn't tell anybody about it. That would have been suicide. Worse yet, if I'd told one of my friends he'd have only had two choices: turn me in right away or become an accomplice to my crime. No, I didn't tell anyone. I just walked off the job.

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LlFI ON 1"1 RUN The first couple years after I tore up my registration card, I was pretty much on my own. I was a man caught between worlds. I had given up on the legal, government-sponsored path I'd followed my entire adult life, but with that kind of history there was no way the Defiance was going to have anything to do with me. Over the years, I'd made a name for myself. I'd taken pains to keep myself disguised-some fantasy about someday having a private life, I guess-but my mask was nearly as famous as Superior's face. Even so, everyone in Delta Prime knew what I looked like. It was an open secret. It wasn't long after I lit out on my own that Delta Prime put out an all­ points bulletin on me, alerting every



law enforcement agency in the country to the fact that I'd gone from authority figure to wanted man. Of course, the Defiance did the same damn thing. They'd seen a number of Primers" defect" over the years, only to eventually reveal themselves as moles and turn in every Defiant they'd come across. Before you register, it's easy to become a Defiant. Hell, to some of the Defiant leadership, simply refusing to comply with the DRA is proof enough of your sincerity. Once you've been inside the government, though, you've been tainted, and it takes a long time to wash the blood from your hands. I didn't really care. Primer, Defiant, it was all the same to me. I knew there was a demand out there for a delta of my unique skills and powers. It was just a matter of finding an employer.

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WORKING fOR THE fAMILY I worked for the Crescent City mob for a short while, mostly on a contract basis. The only problem was I didn' t feel like 1'd really moved up in terms of m y employer. Sure the pay was a bit better, but the hours were nearly as bad, and I was working what I had always though of as the wrong side of the fence. Still there were more similarities between the two than I was comfortable with. Just like the Primers, the Mafia expected me to follow orders without question, believe fanatically in my bosses, and kill to further the organization's ends. I didn't much care for it, but it was a paycheck. And at least the mob never asked me to haul in other deltas for forcible recruitment.



Well, most of the time. In fact, it was just such an incident that led me to leave the Gabriels, the family I was working for in Crescent City. Don Paolo Gabriel, the family' s patriarch, had gotten word of a young man in a friendly family who'd suddenly come into his powers. The poor son of a bitch had his awakening when a delta battle tore through his high school, leaving a wide path of destruction in its wake . He'd been on the run ever since. The Don asked me to find the poor kid and offer him a job. If he wasn't interested in the job, I was to make it clear to him that refusing wasn' t really an option. I reluctantly agreed. When I found the kid, I got the shock of my life. He was a delta all right. He was also only six years old. I just couldn' t do it.

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THE TURNING POINT On the other hand, I couldn't just walk away. If I did, the Gabriels were sure to send someone else after the kid. If I could find him, so could whoever followed me. Now that I knew where he was, I had to actually do something with him. The way I saw it, I had two choices. I could take the kid with me and live on the run from the Gabriels for the rest of our lives. Or I could make them leave us alone. I was already on the run from the government. I didn't want to add the Mafia to the pack of hunters. I decided to make the Gabriels the prey instead.

OPEN SEASON I actually gave Don Gabriel a chance to leave me alone, but the old man didn't see the wisdom in my offer. To his mind, letting me openly defy his orders meant that anyone else in his employ might think she could get away wi th telling him off. He couldn't allow that kind of insubordination, so he put my name at the top of his hit list. Before long, I had lots of dark-haired guys in nice, Italian suits knocking down the door of my pad. Of course, I was expecting them. When it was all over, I sent flowers to their widows.

LEAVING TH£ fAMILY This went on for a couple of days before I finally managed to sneak my way into Don Gabriel's fortress-like house one dark night. The place was crawling with guards and all sorts of electronic security, but I'd seen a lot worse in my spookshow days.

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I left a trail of unconscious bodies behind me on my way in. When I got to Don Gabriel's inner sanctum, he was actually waiting for me there. He was sitting in that overstuffed leather chair of his, right behind that huge mahogany desk that had been polished to a mirror finish. His hair had gotten gray over the years, and he'd put on a few pounds, gotten soft. His eyes, though, were as hard as ever. He looked at me like a lion sizing up his next meal. "Come in," he said. "I've been expecting you." He waved toward a chair in front of his desk. I'm not quite that stupid. I ignored his offer. "I know what this is about," he said, leaning over his desk, talking to me like we were two old friends in on some kind of secret, "and I can't tell you how angry I am about it. You had a good life with us here. We treated you well: money, clothes, women." With that he leaned back into his chair and looked at me with disgust. And now you're going to throw all that away. Over what? A pissant kid. Some snotnosed brat you don't even know." I kept my mouth shut and let him rant. I wasn't there to talk, and he wasn't the kind who would have listened. "Jesus, Patriot, what were you thinking? That the punks just an 'innocent child'? Are you on drugs? Nobody's irmocent!/I He was standing up now, slamming his hand down on his desk. He stared at me for a long moment, his steely eyes blazing at me . Just then, a door to the left opened up, and Vito Gabriel walked in. Vito was a delta like me-very much like me, in fact. Our powers were almost identical. /I

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"I guess that's my cue." Vito smirked as he sauntered into the room. He flashed me a wide grin full of perfectly straight, white teeth. His dark hair was oiled back, and he wore a sharp, black Versace suit. His right fist glowed softly in the dimly lit room. I looked over from Vito to his uncle Paolo. The Don was wearing the same shit-eating grin. "1 don't know what you're smiling about," I told them with a calm I barely felt. "Neither one of you is getting out of here alive." The Don barked a sharp laugh. "Be serious, son. I know guys like you. I've been working with them my whole life. You've lost your edge. You've gone soft. Anytime a killer starts worrying about saving kids, he's not much good as a killer anymore."



I glowered at him. He was right. I was trying to put that part of my life behind me, but he wasn't making it easy. 1'd killed many times for my employers, but 1'd never killed for myself. This time, ] couldn't even say I was just following orders. My hands started to heat up, but as I brought them up, Vito leveled a hotly glowing fist straight at my head. "Don't even think about it," he snarled. "1'11 drop you like a brick." He had me cold, so I let my hands cool down. Guys like Vito rely on their powers too much. They get cocky, careless. He would slip up eventually. I just had to wait for my chance. "Smart boy," said the Don. I wanted to reach out and wipe the smug look off his face-along with most of his teeth-but now wasn't the time. I needed to be patient.

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The old man looked me in the eyes, serious now. I'll remember his words until my dying day-which may not be all that far way, I know. I'm all too aware of that. "Patriot, I've been following you now for many years. I keep track of all the important people in my town, delta or no. And now I've had the pleasure of working with you for the past few months." He paused for a moment to wring his hands. "This little job I sent you on, it was a test. And I have to say, you failed it horribly. All you had to do was bring in one kid-show me that you would follow my orders without question. "Instead, you defy me openly. You know, if you had come to me and tried to talk to me, honestly and in private, none of this might have happened . But no. You have to turn it into an 'issue' between us. "You known the situation I'm in. You know that there are people who would like to see me fall from power. To lose face in front of these vultures is to court death." He really seemed like he'd given the whole matter a lot of thought. I looked closer and saw the bags under his eyes. This was not a man who was sleeping well. "Now, I don't have a choice. It's either you or me, Patriot. You or me. ''I'm afraid," he said, his voice heavy with regret, "it's going to have to be you." With that, he leaned back in his chair and gestured from Vito to me with his hand. He kept his eyes on me the entire time. Don Paolo Gabriel knew the blast was coming, but he never saw it. It caught him in the side of the head and nearly took it off his shoulders.



I looked up at Vito, stunned. He stood there, his fist still smoking from the blast. "Uncle Paolo was right, Patriot," Vito grimaced. "There are lots of people who wanted to see him go down. He was getting old, soft. Time passed him by." He looked down a t the old man's body. It lay slumped over the desk, blood still spilling from its head, creating an ever-widening crimson pool that was beginning to drip onto the floor. When he looked back up at me, I had my fist pointed at his head. It was glowing hot. He winked at me. "You don't really want to do that, sport. As it is, you've already got one murder on your hands." He motioned toward the Don's swiftly cooling body. "The man who led a manhunt against you is going to be found dead in his house from a delta blast. Who do you think the cops are going to be looking for after that? "After all, you're the one with the registered powers. I'm just the grief­ stricken nephew who---as far as they know-is a reg. "You've got the power, the motive, and-thanks to you breaking in here tonight- the opportunity." Vito smiled at me broadly. "I couldn't have planned it better." I kept my fist leveled at him. "Tell me," I asked flatly. "Since I've got his death on my plate, why don't I go for two? Either way, the penalty's the same. They can't execute me twice." Vito mulled that over for a moment, but he already knew the answer. "Two reasons, actually. First, Uncle Paolo was right: You're getting soft. I'm not threatening you at all, and you're not the kind to kill in cold blood .

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"Second, I've just done you the favor of your life." I looked a t him hard, confused. "Think about it, Patriot. I've just killed the man who was leading the charge after you. After this, there's going to be a battle to see who gets to take over the Crescent City operations. I've got my money on the right horse, and if we win, I can guarantee we won't bother trying to settle an old score Uncle Paolo had with you. "You're free. "As far as I'm concerned, you can walk away from here tonight and never look back. Sure, the cops are going to pin the murder on you, but with all the other charges they've already got on you, that's the least of your problems, right? "At least you know the family isn't after you any more." He paused to look me dead in the eye. "You're free to go, pal. But you'd better hurry. Some of those guards you took out are bound to start waking up soon-and if they find you in here with Uncle Paolo's body, well, who knows what might happen." I lowered my fist for a moment, and it was then that Vito began to laugh. It started out as just a chuckle at first, but it got louder and louder until it grated on my nerves. "Hey, Patriot," Vito said as he walked over to the picture window behind his dead uncle's desk. "I always knew you were a smart guy." With that, I brought both fists to bear on the man and blasted him right through the window. He tumbled out from the second-story in a shower of shattered glass, a hole smoking in his expensive suit. He cursed me all the way down. I was pretty sure he'd survive the fall, but to tell the truth, I didn't really care.

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THI DlflAHT VIARS After the papers told the world that I'd assassinated Don Paolo Gabriel, I instantly became more infamous than ever before. As with most events in my life, there was an upside and a downside to this . The downside was the public was now screaming for my head-loudly. Delta Prime was already doing its best to find me though, so I don't know that this really made my life a whole lot worse. The other problem was that Vito actually survived the fall. To this day, I don't think he's ever forgiven me for blasting him out the window, and that's just the way I like it. The main bright spot was the fact that my having supposedly killed the head of the Crescent City mafia apparently turned a lot of heads in the Defiance too. These people, though, knew what a bastard the old Don was, and they thought that anyone who killed such a dangerous, old bastard must be okay in their books. As a result, I was contacted by the Defiance for the first time. In fact, it was Truth herself who sought me out. I guess she figured that with her special talent she could size me up better than just about anyone else. Apparently she liked what she saw, because she soon after offered me a probationary membership into her little club . The first direct benefit of this was I was able to find a home for the little boy 1'd rescued. He seemed to enjoy being on the road with me, but it was no life for a child . Truth placed him with a truly wonderful family who was willing to care for him and-more . importantly-risk jail to cover up hIS true nature.



THE DHIANCf MOVEMENT AND ME I've got to admit, despite the fact I'd been part of the government for m~st of my adult life, I never really felt lIke much of a joiner. The military wasn't a social club. It was a job and a dead serious one at that. Joining up with the Defiance fit me just fine. More than I though it would. After all, as organizations go, it's not much of one. It's mostly just a bunch of deltas who use the internet and other means to coordinate a loosely run resistance movement against the United States government. I knew all about the Defiance from my days in Delta Prime. I'd hauled ill more than one Defiant in my day, and I'd sat in on the interrogation of a few of those. Whenever I did, one thought always struck me: These are the people we're so afraid of? Dear God, most of them could barely string three sentences together, much less mount a massive, coordinated campaign against a powerful, popular, and entrenched government. In those days, I didn't think the Defiants had a chance. Of course, I'm not so sure if I'd change my tune these days. Over the past few years, the Defiance's influence and power has grown by leaps and bounds, but it's hardly ready to turn the world on its ear. All rumors to the contrary, the Defiance will not be la unching a massive sneak attack on the world at the end of the millennium. That kind of undertaking requires all sorts of skills, ordnance, and intelligence that only the government of a large country could possibly supply. Let's just put it this way: It ain't gonna happen.

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MYTH MANAGEMENT The other common misconception people seem to have about the Defiance is that it's one, large, well-oiled terrorism machine. That's what the papers tell you, after all, so it must be true, right? If there's one thing I've learned over the years it's that you can't trust anything anyone ever tells you. It doesn't matter if it comes from the lips of Dan Rather or straight from the mouth of el presidente himself. People only tell you what they want you to hear. That's true of the President, your preacher, your family, and yourself. That's doubly true for me, so be careful when you're reading this. For one, are you sure this piece was actually written by Patriot? Who told you that? And who told them? And how do you know that what I'm writing hasn't been edited? A smart censor would actually leave in text like what I'm writing now-or maybe add in some herself-just to make the whole piece seem that much more authentic. It's a twisted world out there, troopers, and there are days when you shouldn't even trust yourself. For me, those are the best ones, because at least I know I'm ready for whatever cards the world has to deal me.

fACTS AND fAnlONS The truth is-if you think you can trust what I say-the Defiance is really a loose conglomeration of several different resistance movements, each of which tells you that it's the heart of the Defiance. Getting all of these factions to agree on anything is like trying to talk sense to your dog. It only wastes your time and annoys the dog.

There are factions that think that blowing up the White House is the first step toward peace. There are others that think Kennedy's doing a great job of keeping the regs in the dark, it's just that they want the reins of power for themselves. Then there are those that just want to be left alone but find that they can't peacefully convince the Primers to do that. Most, if not all, of these factions use the forums and chat rooms at the Delta Times website to relay information back and forth to each other. Lots of people try to use all sorts of crazy codes to communicate with each other. It's a website, after all, which means it's not exactly a private venue. Others freely speak their minds, giving details on where they are and what they've been doing. Most times they do this because they're confident they'll be moving on before anyone from Delta Prime could use the information to track them down. Other times, they're just desperate enough for help to not really care too much about who answers their call.

My SIDE When it came to choosing sides, I stuck with myself. If you're a new Defiant, I suggest you do the same. Sure, there are factions within the Defiance that you could do a lot worse than fall in with, but once you do, you become a target for every other faction. It's best to step back from the whole politically twisted thing and take your time before you declare any alliances. Of course, I didn't take that advice to heart myself. What was it Sister Cabrini used to tell me? "Do as I say, not as I do!" I can see her point now. Looking at myself, I'm a pretty lousy example of how to do things right.

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I fell in with Truth pretty quickly. She's a powerful woman, and I'm not talking about her delta abilities. Being able to figure out if someone's telling the truth or not isn't much good in a firefight. No, Truth's just a forceful personality. When she's convinced of something, she argues for it like Moses bringing down the 10 Commandments from Mt. Sinai and smashing them at his people's feet. When she talks, you listen. At least I do, and if you're reading this on the Delta Times website, you probably agree with me. Truth's one of the few people that actually manages to stay above the fracas that's always going on between the different factions. She's got no interest in anyone's agenda but her own, and hers she wears on her sleeve.



THE TRUTH Truth's all about the truth. She wants to drag it screaming and crawling out of the backrooms and boardrooms and into the harsh light of day. She figures that if all the regs really knew what was going on in this country-if they could really see how much we're all alike-we wouldn' t be in the state we're in. "Knowledge is power," she's always telling me. "Right now, the people have given Kennedy and Delta Prime all of the power. The government's got a stranglehold on information in this country. When that's broken, the people will be able to free their minds . Like the song says, if they can do that, the rest will follow." I like Truth a lot, but I don't know if I always agree with her. In my

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experience, there are some matters that can't be settled by talking it out. Of course, she'd fight to the death to defend my right to disagree with her. Or fight to take that right back. No matter whether you agree with the woman or not, she's worth listening to. She's been at this Defiance thing a while, and people have a way of seeing the honest goodness in her and opening up to her. There's not an important Defiant in this country that doesn't count on Truth as a reliable source if not actually as a friend . I'm talking about real Defiants, of course, not crooks or killers who simply wrap the title around themselves as a cloak of respectability. Those posers toss around words like "freedom fighters" or "rebels" when all they really want to do is rob, riot, and kill for the sheer "pleasure" of it.

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RIDIMPTIOH

I bear a lot of guilt for the things I did when I was a member of Delta Prime. I was a willing party to the atrocities the President visited upon the American people. Even I wasn't always the one committing the actual crimes, I was complicit in them. I knew what was going on, and I let it happen. Worse yet, I had the power to stop it, and I didn' t. Once I got in with Truth and the Defiance though, that changed. It was like I'd been reborn, given a second chance to make things right, and I didn' t waste any time trying to make up for past mistakes. I spent a lot of my time avoiding the Primers that had been assigned to hunting me down. They were a dogged bunch, always just a step or two behind

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me. Still, I managed to keep them guessing about my whereabouts and my motives for a long time. Unfortunately, that didn' t last.

SAVE THE (HILDREN There's that old saw that says something like, "If you want to change the world, start with the kids." I took tha t to heart. Under Truth's guidance, I made it my mission to find young deltas and contact them before they were hauled in by Delta Prime. Sometimes it was a thankless job, with more than one brainwashed kid wanting to turn me in as soon as he saw my mask. I can hardly blame the kids for being afraid. After all, the papers had been telling them for years that Patriot was the kind rogue element that would rip open your skull and eat your brains with a golden spoon. You can see why they might not have been happy to see me . Others though-most of them already on the run from the Primers­ were ready to discount what they'd heard about me. It's easy to think that the government might have lied about someone else when you've got a platoon of Primers hauling in your family for questioning and hunting you down like a rabid dog. I hauled a lot of young bacon out of the fire and turned them over to Truth. She tells me she's managed to place them all with sympathetic families willing to risk jail to give a poor, scared, innocent kid a second chance. Of course, some of those kids aren't in this country anymore. A few of them have even escaped to places like Australia, where there are no laws against having delta powers, and people like us can live free.

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DOWN UNDER A lot of deltas dream about making it to the land down under, but it's not all it's cracked up to be. All kinds of deltas-good and bad-run rampant around the place, which makes it a dangerous place to live, delta or not. The people who are afraid of deltas aren't all wrong, you know. There's a lot to be afraid of. Sure, you can leave your country behind for a life in another land where you've got rights. Given the current state of affairs in the USA, there's no shame in giving up and heading out. All I'm saying is if you're looking for paradise, there's no place that qualifies on this ravaged planet.

AMERICA, RIGHT OR WRONG

That's the phrase that my instructors in Delta Prime pounded into my head over the years. The idea behind it is that you always do what your country asks of you because it's your country, no matter what you might personally believe. That's a crock. Abe Lincoln said it best. We're supposed to be a democracy. "Of the people, by the people, and for the people." We're not here to serve some crazed despot just because he's in charge. America's about the people, not the power. I believe in that catchphrase though. "America, right or wrong." America might be wrong these days, but I'm not about to abandon her. This is my country, dammit, and I'm going to stick with her, no matter what. For some people, that means they should stay in their jobs and do what they can to change things with what

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little power they have. You see this when a Primer hauls in a kid and falsifies the report to show that the poor rookie's only had her powers for a few days, all so she can avoid a free trip to New Alcatraz. That might have been enough for me at one point, when I was able to fool myself into thinking that my superiors-all the way up to the President himself-knew better than I what was in the country's best interests. Not anymore. I stopped doing that a long time ago.

WE THE PEOPLE In the end, it all gets right back to that preamble to the Constitution: "We the people." We the people give the government its power. That's one thing that's never changed in America, even in the last 40 years. Think about it. When Kennedy pushed the Delta Registration Act through Congress, was there a hue and cry from the people? No, we let it zoom right on through. Hell, we couldn't get that bill passed fast enough. And when the President declared martial law 36 years ago, did the American public complain? You might thjnk we would have, but no. Why? We were scared. We were scared, so we surrendered control of our own destiny and put it in the hands of a power-mad man with aspirations of ruling over us like royalty. Back in the early '60s, the media used to call Kennedy's White House "Camelot." At the time, I'm sure they never realized how prophetic they were being.

PROfiLES IN COURAGE Kennedy himself wrote a book once: Profiles in Courage. It was about standing up for yourself and your country and what you believed in. You should go back and read that. It rings more true today than ever before. You don't see a lot of courage in America these days. No, you see people cowering in fear of atomic annihilation and delta-caused mayhem. The American public is frightened out of its collective mind. It's easy to see why. Never in the history of humanity has the future of the world ever been so uncertain. Never has so much hung in the balance. This isn't a time to be scared though. When the days are darkest, that's when you need to look deep inside yourself for the light. In this new world, it's the time to be brave.

THE WAY BACK As a people, we can put an end to the fears that put a stranglehold on our freedoms. We can restore democracy to our land once again. We can make our country right. All it takes is courage. If we're not afraid of the "Soviet threat" or the "Delta threat" or any other threat the government might manage to come up with; if we take each day knowing that it might all come to an end and stand our ground, preferring that it end well rather than go on so badly; if we truly share the values of our founding fathers-that we have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness-then nothing can stand in our way. Well, that's not exactly true. Nothing can stand in your way. By the time you read this, I'll be dead.

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JULY 4, 1999

My trial ended today, on our nation's birthday. As I sit here writing these words, I can hear fireworks exploding in the distance. I can 't see them from the tiny window in m y cell, but I can imagine them in my mind's eye. The Fourth of July was always my favorite holiday, even when I was a kid. As an orphan, lots of the other holidays didn't mean a whole lot. Sure, at St. Savio's they always made a fuss over us kids during Christmas and Easter and even our birthdays, but it wasn' t like celebrating with a real family, if you know what I mean. When the Fourth rolled around though, the entire country got together and congra tula ted ourselves and our founders on being brave enough to stand on our own.

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It was one of the few times in my life that I really felt like I was part of a family, and my brothers and sisters were everyone else in the country. And, of course, the President was our benevolent father. That all changed when our country's doting mother got blown to pieces in Dallas in 1963. If there's one thing I could change in all of history, it would be that one moment. I'd have Superior sweep in just minutes earlier and mop the floor with the entire Dreadnaut team. Better yet, I'd do it myself. And then I'd continue on to find the Devastator and put him in his grave 13 years before the Bicentennial Battle. The seeds to that tragedy-to the whole downfall of our nation-were sown on that fateful November morning. But there's really no such thing as a second chance.

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My TRIAL I've never really been much on second chances myself. If you do things right the first time, you don't need them. That's not to say that I always did everything right. But I always did my best. I don't regret saving that girl from the DP recruitment team. Sure, I knew they'd be hot on her heels, and I knew there was a good chance they' d be ready for me. I did it anyway. Why? Because she needed a hand. I mean, isn't that why you help people?

THf (HARGfS Still, that's not wha t I was on trial for. Actually, helping the girl" flee justice" was one of the charges, but there was a laundry list of others, most of them a lot more serious. The worst charges were things like "espionage," "dereliction of duty," and so on. Technically, I was AWOL from Delta Prime too, since I never had my resignation approved. Anyone of those charges would have been enough to give me a lifetime pass to the New Alcatraz cafeteria . That wasn't enough for Walter Mulroney, the federal prosecutor on my case. No, he wanted me to go down for a capital offense: murder. Now, I've killed a lot of people in my time, almost all in the service of my country. I almost couldn't believe which one Mulroney decided to charge me with: the death of Paolo Gabriel. To me, it's the final insult to my country that the federal prosecutor couldn't come up with a real crime to hang me for.

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I had always been pretty careful about committing crimes in the past. Part of the training I got at Delta Prime and with the CIA concentrated not only on what to do but how to get away with it clean. That was my job, and I was good at it. It's hard to cover up for a crime you didn't actually commit though, especially when someone out there's doing his best to frame you for it. All the evidence against me was circumstantial, of course. The kicker was the eyewitness: Vito Gabriel. I never should have let that son of a bitch live.

WITNESS fOR THE PROSE(UIION You probably saw at least part of Vito's dramatic testimony against me. It was on every channel, I'm told, and I believe it. I watch the news regularly myself, just so I can keep up on what Kennedy wants everyone to believe. When you're fighting a disinformation campaign, it helps to know what you're up against. My favorite bits were the times I was spotted in different cities across America, some of which I'd never been to in my life. Anyhow, Vito stood up in that witness box, laid his hand on the Holy Bible, and swore to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Then he proceeded to lie through his teeth. Vito was no stranger to a courtroom, of course. Mulroney had personally brought him up on charges of racketeering and conspiracy a half dozen times over the years. That's what happens when you're the head of the leading local crime family. The law always wants to talk to you.

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Apparently the government wanted to make an example of me. They wanted me bad enough to actually grant Vito immunity for previous crimes in return for his testimony. You'd think a detail like that might have raised a few red flags for the judge or jury, but they didn't seem worried about any potential conflict of interest.

WE, THE JURY I was actually flattered that Judge "Iron" Mike Byron bothered to call in a jury for my trial. That's a nicety that most judges don't mess around with these days. Rumor had it that word had come down from the highest levels of the government that my trial was to have every semblance of being fair and impartial. Note that a "semblance" doesn't mean "really." In fact, the jury was stacked with the most conservative bunch of delta­ haters you could find. My attorney, the legendary defense lawyer Connor Darrow, did his best to stack the jury in my favor, but it didn't do much good. Apparently the government stacked the entire jury pool, which was "selected" long before Darrow even saw these people.

MY LAWYER Darrow's really one of a kind. He actually took my case on free of charge because, in his words, "It was the right thing to do." You can't buy help like that. Believe me, I tried. No other lawyer in the entire city would touch my case with a habeus corpus. They all knew it was a losing proposition from the start, and none of them wanted to be

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branded a "Defiant sympa thizer" for taking the trouble to lend me a hand. Judge Byron was about to appoint me a public defender when Darrow stepped forward. In my opinion, Darrow's a great man, cast in the mold of his grandfather, the near-mythic Clarence Darrow. He takes on cases because he believes in them, win or lose. The elder Darrow had the reputation of having never had a single client actually face the death penalty for his crimes. What's even more amazing about that is he went out of his way to take capital cases simply because he was so against the death penalty. Connor's like that-he's got that same sense of being on a crusade­ except he takes cases in which the defenders are deltas. I don't know if he likes losing or he's just plain stubborn.

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THf COURT Connor's record isn't exactly as spotless as his grandfather's, but it's not from a lack of skill. Under Kennedy's version of martial law, the burden of proof in a violent crime is not "beyond a reasonable doubt." It's more like, "If you might be guilty, the country's probably better off with you in jail." I mean, why take chances, right? It's better to have an innocent person rot in jail than risk the lives of the rest of us. After all, if the prosecutor believes enough in the case to bring charges, you're probably in a position to have committed the crime. Even if you're "innocent" this time around, who's to say you haven't committed the crime in the past? Or worse yet, might do so in the future?

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"Iron Mike" was pretty clear with his instructions to the jury members. Unless Darrow could prove my innocence entirely, I was to be convicted. Of course, all that happened off camera.

THf IVlDfNCf The trial itself was fairly short, but the case the prosecution presented was pretty darn good. Vito was a sharp man, and he'd planned this crime as a frame job from the start. Even in the pre-martial law days, I'd have been facing an uphill battle. As it was, I was doomed. I mean, I was in the room when Paolo Gabriel died, and I'd busted a lot of his guard's heads to get there. Better yet, since Paolo had put out a call for my death, I had a strong motive for wanting him dead. And, of course, Paolo had been killed by a delta blast to the head. The crime fit me to a T, and they wrapped me up and found me guilty in it. The best part was that Vito was an unregistered delta. Sure, everyone in the family knew he had some kind of mojo working for him, but he kept his cards pretty close to his chest, and none of his close associates were going to turn him in. Those that had thought about it had ended up like his Uncle Paolo: unable to give it another thought for the lack of brains still in their skull. Still, either the bosses at Delta Prime didn't know anything about it-which I found hard to believe-or better yet, they did, and they didn't want to do anything about it. I'd bet my last dollar that Vito's immunity package included a wink and a nod from Delta Prime. Vito's eyewih1ess testimony was the final nail in my coffin. The bastard



actually managed to summon up tears for his "poor, dead uncle." The at-home viewers were instantly convinced that the government was simply putting down a mad dog, someone who was a danger to themselves and their children. I wasn't the hero the Defiance had made me out to be. In fact, I was a dozen times worse than the original reports had led everyone to believe. If the prosecution had suddenly introduced a charge at that point, claiming that I ate babies, I think the public would have believed it. Like I said before, the Kennedy government rules through fear. Once Mulroney was through with his case, the person everyone was afraid of was me. You can guess how things went from there.

THf DfHNSf Conner did his best, but it was hopeless from the start. Still, we had to try. He called in Hector Comacho (my old CO in Delta Prime), Captain Suze Connick (my CO in Delta Squadron), and even Sister Cabrini. Each one of them testified to the strength of my character and convictions. Sister Cabrini's words were particularly moving, as she told the world about the orphaned child she'd helped raise. "I've always been proud of him," she said. "No matter what anyone says about him, I know him, and he's a good man." The jury wasn't swayed. Conner even put me on the stand. Conventional wisdom said doing something like that was suicide, but when you're already pretty much dead, what have you got to lose?

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My nSTlMONY Darrow: For the record, please state your name. Patriot: My name is JOM Cruise. People call me Patriot. Darrow: Tell me, Mr. Cruise­ Patriot. Where were you on the night in question, the night of the murder of Paolo Gabriel? Patriot: I was in his home. Darrow: And what were you doing there? Patriot: I was working for him at the time, and I'd decided to quit. He didn't much care or that, so he'd put out a contract on my life. Darrow: He wanted you dead? Patriot: Yes. Darrow: It seems like you'd hardly be welcome in his home then. What were you doing there?

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Patriot: I came to ask Mr. Gabriel to leave me alone. Darrow: And did he agree to do that? Patriot: No. In fact, he ordered one of his men to kill me on the spot. Darrow: And who was this man, this killer? Patriot: Vito Gabriel. He's sitting right over there. . Darrow: But you're not dead, and neither is Vito Gabriel. What happened? Patriot: Vito shot his uncle instead. Darrow: Why would he do that? Patriot: My guess is he wanted him dead. Patriot: Seriously, Vito wanted to take over is uncle's operations in Crescent City. Darrow: Did he succeed at that? Patriot: With his uncle out of the

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way he was able to take control of the city's most powerful criminal organiza tion. Darrow: But Paolo Gabriel was found dead from a delta blast. How do you explain that? Patriot: Paolo's a delta, a blaster. It's a well-kept secret. Darrow: Do you have any way to prove that? Patriot: Any doctor could figure it out. Darrow: I see. I have no further questions. Patriot: Judge Byron? I'd like to say something in my own defense. Patriot: Ladies and gentlemen of the jury. Let me first say how wonderful it is to see a jury in this country after so much time. You've heard enough lies here today. I'll make this brief. I've done a lot of things in my life­ even some things I'm not so proud of­ but I didn't kill Paolo Gabriel. Even if I'm innocent of that though, there are plenty of other charges the goverrunent could convict me on. I haven't led the most exemplary life, as I'm sure you know. But before you go into that room and deliberate-before you deliver your verdict-you need to ask yourself one question. Why am I here? It's because I'm a delta. Because I'm a delta, the government sees me as a threat to this great nation of ours. And maybe you agree. But the fact is I'm no monster. I'm just as human as you-or your children. I come with all the flaws and blessings of humanity, and at the heart of myself, I'm no better or worse than anyone else. Although perhaps I'm a bit more foolish than some. You see, I still believe in this country of ours, no

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matter how perverted its values have become over the years. I still believe we can get to a place in which we see each other as human beings, where we can break down the walls that force the situation to become "us" versus " them." There's no justice in this society anymore, my friends. There's "just us." That might seem fine to you when you're part of the "us" in power, but being on the other side of that fence isn't all it's cracked up to be. When it really comes down to it, that wall's just a sham that's been put up to make you think you need the people who raised the wall for you. They tell you that, if the wall was to come down, you'd be overwhelmed, destroyed, and even killed . That's a lie. There are all kinds of deltas in this world, just as there are all kinds of people. Having amazing powers doesn't make you any better or worse than your fellow human beings. 1£ anything, it only makes you all that much more human to begin with. 1£ you're going to convict me just for being a delta, than go ahead. I'm certainly guilty of that. Please remember one thing for me. Just about everything I did in the course of my life, I did for my country. Not just for me or for other deltas, but for you and everyone else in this great nation of ours. After all, I'm nothing if not a patriot. Now that I've stepped out of line, Uncle Sam wants to disown me in the worst way. You can stop that from happening. You can make a difference. All you've got to do is what your heart already knows is right: find me innocent-if you dare. Please, for your sake and mine, be brave.

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THf WHOLf POilU Haven't you been paying attention? I might talk a good game, but that's not worth a whole lot when you're up against almost four decades of martial law. The people's need to be protected by our government like a classroom of lost kindergartners has allowed those in power to strip us so cleanly of power that it's almost impossible to even think about taking it back. It's been that way so long, I don't even think we'd know what to do with that power if we had it again. The general helplessness of our people has been so ingrained into our society, that it's almost impossible to fight. What we need now are leaders who can show the people how to have courage, who can help them get to a place where they feel like they can step

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from the shadows and stand on their own once again. Unfortunately, any time someone steps forward to fill that kind of a role, she gets shot down­ sometimes literally. The way Darrow argued it in his closing remarks, a verdict against me was a verdict against hope, against any chance for a change for the better in this country. Not only that, but he warned that my death would cause riots across the country when outraged deltas decided to take their anger out on their fellow citizens. Sure, deltas were hauled in by the government all the time---and nobody ever rioted then-but they rarely got a trial. And if they did, it sure wasn't the main source of news and entertainment on television for months at a time. According to Darrow, I'd become a hero to deltas everywhere.

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Better yet, m y trial had become a metaphor for how American deltas everywhere were being treated by their govenunent. The government had wanted to make a quick example of me to show what happens to a Delta Primer who deserts his post. Instead, they got the trial of the century. Darrow did a good job turning the whole point of the case around on the feds. It quickly went from being a murder case to a trial about how the government treats and recruits deltas. In fact, Darrow did his level best to put the Constitutionality of the entire DRA on trial. And the best part was that once the whole thing got started the government was too afraid of public backlash to turn the cameras off. Either that, or they ~ust kept hoping for Mulroney to turn It back around in the end. He never did. Not that it mattered all that much, of ~ourse. As much effort as Darrow put mto the case, you just can' t turn around decades of indoctrina tion in the course of a few days. In the end, I think we did manage to reach some people. Judge Byron, I know, was sympathetic to my plight. He was old enough to remember what ~t was like to live free, among a people m control of their own destiny. Still, even if we changed his mind abou t us, we weren't going to change his actions. "Iron Mike" was hard-minded enough to remember tha t no rna tter how many fancy verbal games Darrow might play with Mulroney, the fact was that this case wasn't really about the Delta Registration Act or any kind of delta scare. In reality, it all carne down to murder, and as I said before, that case was pretty damn tight against me .

THE VERDICT T~e jury deliberated for three days. I was Impressed that it took that long­ even encouraged. For a few happy moments there, I even found myself hoping for an acquittal-or at the very least a hung jury. In the end though, it just meant more time for me to rot in jail. The verdict came back just like I expected it to. Guilty as charged.

THE SENTEN(E During the sentencing hearing, Darrow hauled in just about everyone who might have a single good thing to say about me. I was amazed and truly touched b y the number of people who stepped forward to reveal how-at one time or another in the past-I'd actually done something that had changed their lives for the better. Some of them I'd even saved from certain death. I didn't even recognize most of them, but they were grateful just the same. Mulroney ignored the character issue and stuck to the" facts " of the case s~ch as they were. He showed hu~e pIctures of Paolo Gabriel's bloody corpse. He brought in Paolo's widow and bereaved children. He even got Vito up on the stand to curse my name. In the end, it took the jury another three days to come up with the final decision of my life. I'm sure you read about it in the papers or saw it on TV. There's no secret about what the result was. Death. What else is there for a man in my position? Now I've just got to wait for my turn to walk the last mile. Delaney, baby, I'm on my way.

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AUGUST 4, 1999

Today is the day I die. In my line of work, I think about death a lot. Oh, I try not to let it bother me, but there's always this very real threat of dying hanging over me like the sword of Damocles. There are lots of ways to die. I always thought I'd end up getting shot to death in a gunfight or having my head torn off by some delta outlaw or whatever. I expected to die young. When I was young, death didn't mean anything to me. Risking my life was a thrill. Sometimes I think that's one of the reasons I didn't try to leave the government earlier. I actually enjoyed my work. Hey, I got to travel the world, meet all sorts of people, and then oppress them on behalf of the United States government. Plus I got paid. Back then, death seemed like something far off, something for other people. Not for me. Hell, I could bounce bullets off my skin. Death wasn't even on my dance card. Since then though, deatll's become an old friend. I've seen lots of people die over the years. Some were friends I mourned. Others I killed myself. It's never easy. I like to think tha t everyone I ever hurt deserved it, but I know that's not quite true. But most of them got what was coming to them-at least from Uncle Sam's point of view. Now it's my turn. And death's no friend of mine. If you were to look back on my life, you'd probably see it in one of two ways.

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POINTS Of VIEW Some people would call me a traitor to my country. I was an exemplary soldier for a good, long time, and then something suddenly went wrong. From that point of view, I should now make a deathbed conversion back to Kennedy's doctrine. I should apologize for leaving the fold of Delta Prime and working against my government. I should truly regret what I've done. Well, that's not going to happen. Others-Defiants, probably-might say that I was more like Saul on the road to Damascus. For a long time, I worked on the side of evil, until suddenly I was struck down and saw the light. After tha t, I worked to make things right, to atone for my past misdeeds. Unfortunately, I'm being cut down now before I can complete my work. You know, that's a point of view I could really get behind. But it's not entirely accura te either. I'm tired. My work here is done. I've struggled long and hard for the Defiance over these last 10 years. Sometimes I think I've made a dent in the injustice we all face every day. Other times, well, I'm not so sure. Either way, my work is over. There's not going to be any cavalry coming over the hill this time. There won't be any daring jailbreak. The warden's not going to come down here this evening and find an empty cell. And that's okay. I had a good life. I muddled through it as best I could, and all I can say is I hope I left things better than I found them-or at least better than they would have been if I'd not been around. But just because I'm about to shuffle off this mortal coil doesn't mean my work's over.

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OUR WORK Whoever might read this-whether you're a Defiant or a Primer or even just an average Jane or Joe--I've got a challenge for you. Look around you and think about what this country's become. Watch how people can be ripped from their beds in the middle of the night. How they can be tossed into jail without any recourse. How we all live in terror. There are good reasons to be afraid. This is a dangerous word we live in, after all. But the fact is that the worst crimes are the ones we've committed to ourselves. We let the government take over our lives. We were scared, and we gave over our power to a small group of people who wield it like a club. We were afraid that things were getting out of control, so we surrendered control to a "higher power," our federal government. Now things truly are out of our control. Let me say this again: We did this to ourselves, and we did it willingly. But it's not too late. We can change things, turn it all around, restore a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. We just have to want it bad enough. If you do, if you want liberty so bad you can taste it, then step up and take charge of your streets. Take charge of your community. Take charge of your life. That's the secret that our President doesn't want you to know. He's only in power because we let him be. And we can change that. All you need to do is want it bad enough to step forward and grab back the control you surrendered. It's yours for the taking.

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RIQUlIM FOR PATRIOT

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THE DEATH Of AHERO For those of you who've been living on another planet for the last few months, here's the news of the year: Patriot is dead. As my regular readers know, Patriot was a good friend of mine, and I'm going to miss him more than I can possibly express in a few, short w?rds. He was a true friend, a true Amencan, and-yes-a true Defiant. He's one man who lived up to his codename. Now, I know some of you are shaking your heads. "What?" you're asking yourself. "Is she on crack? Patriot was the most subversive Defiant around!" That's certainly one way of looking a t it. After joining the Defiance about 10 years ago, Patriot threw himself into the organization in a way that few others had before or have since. That fervent dedication to liberty and freedom for Defiants and deltas and regs everywhere was what drove him to such amazing lengths. That's exactly what I'm talking about. Patriot was dedicated to the idea of America as it was created by our founders-not the beastly thing it's been mutated into today by Kennedy and his jackbooted thugs. He cared about all those inalienable rights that most of us just pay lip . service to. Not him though. To Patnot, our rights as citizens were something sacred, right up there with mom and apple pie. . You could even say that Amenca was his religion. Sure the flock may have strayed from its proper course, but he was determined to do what he could to keep the rest of us on the straight and narrow.

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THE (OLD, HARD fACTS Since this is supposed to be a news article, I should get the facts out of the way before we go much further. John Cruise-better known as the masked Defiant called Patriot-was executed early this morning by a firing squad. Cruise was incarcerated in New Alcatraz prison, in the heart of Chicago Bay, for the past six months. He was there on charges related to his work to undermine the Delta Registration Act, most often by helping unregistered deltas avoid capture by Delta Prime. The most notable charge in the laundry list of offenses Cruise allegedly committed was the murder of noted mob leader Paolo Gabriel nearly 10 years ago. The conviction on this charge is apparently how Cruise merited his death sentence. Cruise was brought out into the prison's exercise yard for his midnight execution. Apparently at the moment that Patriot was brought into the yard, a group of Defiants attempted a valiant jailbreak aimed at freeing Cruise before he could be killed. Unfortunately, Delta Prime was more than ready for this last-ditch effort to free the prisoner. In an unusual move, they increased the power to the null­ field generator that surrounds the island, instantly nullifying the powers of everyone of the Defiants-even those that thought they were safely out of the field's range. Primers flying specially shielded Armorgeddon suits made quick work of the suddenly unpowered rescue team. More than one Defiant died on that island that night. Hard numbers are impossible to come by, but I estimate that up to three "rescuers" died, and four more were captured.

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ATIMf fOR DYING Then, of course, there was Patriot. He stood straight and proud in his prison blues, unshackled and ready for his final reward. Never once on the long walk from his cell to the yard did he falter. Not once did a hint of fear creep into his eyes. Cruise knew what was coming. He'd been preparing for this moment for weeks. There were no surprises for him, only the question about what might wait for him on the other side of this life. In short, he was the epitome of bravery. The two-man firing squad, each bearing a high-caliber rifle loaded with armor-piercing bullets, waited for the signal from Warden James Leffort. The warden, looking grim due to the duties he was obliged to carry out, stood patiently by a nondescript black telephone, hoping that someone on the other end would pick it up and announce that Cruise would be reprieved. The call never came. Sensing tha t the time for mercy had passed, Warden Leffort gave the two riflemen a nod. They raised their rifles. The warden asked Cruise if he had any last words. He did, and he spoke them so well as to move the entire audience from pride to tears to shame. (The transcript of this speech is included at the end of this article.) Then, granted the condemned man's final request, Warden Leffort himself stepped forward and handed Patriot his mask. The man who'd gone from hero to villain-or the other way around, depending on your point of view-stopped and looked into the eyes of his mask for a moment like he was trying to recognize an old friend.

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Then, with the ease of decades of practice, Cruise tied his mask over his face. The red, white, and blue bandanna fluttered softly in the night breeze coming in off the bay as Patriot stood tall against the surrounding darkness . The warden shook Patriot's hand strongly, then gave him a quick, solemn salute and backed away.

THf SHOTS HfARD 'ROUND THf WORLD The two rifleman sighted down the length of their weapons. Then, on a signal from the warden, they fired as one. The first shots smashed into Patriot, knocking him into the ground. Silence reigned for a long moment. Then he got up. It's no surprise that a man as tough as Patriot wasn't going to go down with a single bullet. Two guards came from the back of the small group of observers assembled to watch this, and they helped steady the wounded delta on his feet. After a moment, he shrugged them away and nodded for the executioners to go on, almost as if he was taunting them to do their worst. The guards moved away, and the shots rang ou t a second time, this time knocking Patriot's battered body clear off his feet . He lay there bleeding for a long moment. The prison doctor went over to examine his body, hoping to finally be able to pronounce the man merCifully dead-but it was not to be. Patriot struggled to his knees. He stayed there for a long moment, but when the riflemen drew a bead on him again, he made a superhuman effort to make it to his feet. "I'm not dying on my knees," he stated flatly as he tottered precariously in the middle of the yard, waiting for the next shots.

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They finally came. This time, the bullets punched clear through Patriot's body, blasting outward from his back. He wobbled there gracelessly for a moment before finally collapsing in a heap that looked curiously small for such a solid man. The doctor tiptoed over to the corpse and carefully examined it for a full minute before finally declaring Patriot dead. The two guards who had helped Patriot to his feet before now carried out a gurney and carefully placed the dead delta's body upon it. With little ceremony, they covered the entire thing with a white sheet that rapidly stained red, then rolled the whole thing out of there. Somewhere in the audience, a press­ hardened woman silently wept. I know because it was me.

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THE AfTERMATH Then, of course, there were the riots. Actually, it's almost difficult to call them riots. The word "riot" implies a general breakdown of the social structure, one in which most if not all of the people in an area suddenly decide to leave the law behind. In this case, the only people rioting were the less-responsible Defiants. Many Defiants took to the street in the aftermath of Patriot's execution, determined to exact some kind of retribution from the government and the people who had put the best­ known Defiant to death. It was days before the police finally had everything well in hand. In Los Angeles, the riots raged much longer, with Delta Prime actually ordering the incineration of an entire city block.

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After all, it's the only sure way to know that you've killed everyone in the area, right? It certainly manages to get that down pat. Most of the rioters got tired of hurting innocents and damaging property once the sun came up the next day. In fact, lots of Defiants actually pitched in to stop their rioting brethren when the local police and Delta Prime units proved less than effective. When the sun came up, lots of the rioters went home, but there were a few notable ones that just kept going on and on and on. Paula Wax ton-a Defiant who once ran under the tag of "Liberty" and was even Patriot's partner in the Defiance for a couple years in the mid-'90s­ actually went so far as to knock the top off of the Crescent City Police Headquarters. Repairs continue today.

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THE fUNERAL As a veteran of Delta Squadron and Delta Prime, Patriot was theoretically entitled to a military funeral with full honors. Instead, he was stripped of even those last of his rights and buried in a nondescript grave in a small ceremony. The location of Cruise's tombstone was supposed to be a tightly held secret, but eventually word of its location leaked out. Over the past week, the place has become a kind of impromptu shrine. Dozens of people have left flags of all sizes on and around his gravesite. Other people leave more traditional things, like flowers. And many of the Defiants who have managed to sneak past the low-grade security to pay their respects have even left their masks.

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IWWW.deltatimes.coii1\dle.go?)Js.co~ It was a quiet, Catholic ceremony, even though Cruise hadn't been a practicing Catholic for years. It was presided over by Father Patrick Cooney, an old friend of Cruise's from his childhood at St. Savio's Orphanage in the lost city of Chicago. A few of Patriot's friends from his days with Delta Prime actually got up to say a few words about him. The most touching came from a hard­ edged Hector Comacho, who called Cruise, "The toughest son of a bitch, I ever had the pleasure of working with-and against." In generat Defiants stayed away from the ceremony, as the cemetery was crawling with all sorts of police and Delta Primers. Later that night, though, a small group of Cruise's most loyal friends got together for a midnight meeting over the grave of the man they-and the rest of the country-had just lost. We all wept bitter tears.

PATRIOT'S LAST WORDS When asked if he had any last words, this is what Patriot said. "My fellow Americans, today I finally fulfill a dream that I've had ever since 1 was a boy. Today, I get to do something both for my country and what 1 believe in. "I get to die for them. "Some might fear death, but death's been my friend for a long time. No, that's not what I fear most. "The thing that stops me in my tracks is the thought that I could have done more to help my fellow citizens. That maybe 1 was too slow or simply didn't work hard enough to improve the lives of others. "Now, I can lay those fears to rest, for I am about to make the ultimate

sacrifice for those I care most about. I'm going to die for them. "My only hope is that my death won't be in vain, but that's not really up to me. No, it's up to you. "It's up to you to go back to your homes and talk to your families and friends and tell them what I was all about. Tell them that I lived my life the best I knew how, trying to put an end to the fascist, martial-law chokehold threatening to strangle every last freedom out of this country. "Tell them that when it would have been easiest to keep my head down and my mouth shut-when the smartest thing to do would have been to run and hide-I held my ground. Tell them that I stood up for what I believed in, that I fought against injustice in all its forms, right up until the bitter end. "And better yet, tell them that they can do the same. " A grea t American once said, "1 regret that I have only one life to give for my country." That's exactly how I feel. Because if 1had more lives, you can bet they'd be lining up behind me to fight the good fight against President Kennedy and his fascist thugs! "Of course, that's not how it works, so I'm depending on the rest of the world to wake up and follow my lead. It's time to stand up for our rights or lose them forever. "And may God have mercy on those who stand against the side of justice." With that, Patriot stood ready to receive his final punishment. According to the doctor who examined Patriot's body after the final shots, he had one last thing to say. As he lay there bleeding to death, he managed to croak out this final thought: "Ever Defiant."

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CRESCENT CITY

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LIfE IN THE BIG (ITY Crescent City is the newest kid on the block-if the block you 're talking about is "world metropolitan centers." Like the song says, "If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere." Sure, it used to refer to New York City, but the Big Apple's fallen on hard times these days, what with most of Manhattan declared a warzone. Most people have heard about Crescent City-if not, crawl out from beneath that 40-ton rock you're living under-but not everyone's been there. Hey, the city's only been around for just over 20 years, after all. What can you expect.

THE NIGHT lHE UGHTS WENT OUT It all began on July 4, 1976. Most of the people in the city of Chicago were busy celebrating the country's bicentennial in true Midwestern style: the barbecue. While most of the average shmoes were munching on bratwurst and watching the fireworks fill the sky, just about every decent alpha on the planet was engaged in a roaring battle against the Devastator and his Dreadnauts in the heart of the city, right atop the then­ tallest building in the world: the mighty Sears Tower. It was just after dusk when that big flash of white light went off and ruined everyone's day. I'm not going to go into the gory details about how many millions of people were gone along with the city of Chicago, a few of its suburbs, and a lot of the bedrock that sat beneath them. You can get that kind of information just about anywhere. Most of it's even fairly accurate, despite the government censors.

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I mean, how are you going to lie about something that big? The fact is a staggering number of people shuffled off this mortal coil that day, and a lot of real estate went along with them. That's a mindboggling tragedy, the scope of which is almost impossible for the human mind to comprehend. Go ahead and give it a try. I can't do it.

ATRIUMPH OF THE HUMAN SPIRIT Of course, where most of us saw the most horrible crisis of all time, one man saw opportunity. Ben Archer, the president of Triumph, Inc., the largest private employer of deltas in the world, had a vision. Where there was dea th, he would bring life. Where there was destruction, he would rebuild. Where there was despair, he would create hope. While most of the Chicago suburbs were still digging themselves out of the water, Archer was busy buying up huge tracts of the freshest lakefront property in the world. Some called him a vulture for doing so, but the fact was that he was paying good money for land that was all but gone. Most people were more than happy to cash his checks-at least at the time. A lot of those people are now kicking themselves for not having held out just a little bit longer. Before too many days had passed, it became apparent what Archer and Triumph were trying to do. At his own expense, Archer sent in dozens of teams of deltas to help clear the rubble around the newly formed Chicago Bay. No matter what you might think of his motives, Archer 's actions saved lives . When it was all over, Triumph's deltas pulled more than 500 people from the wreckage.

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On the one-month armiversary of the disaster, Archer held a press conference and made his now-historic armouncement. He would be founding a city in the ruins around the Chicago crater. For the shape it makes on a map as it hugs the edge of Chicago Bay, it was to be called Crescent City.

THE (ARLY DAYS

When Crescent City first began, it wasn't more than mile after mile of waterlogged coastline. Even the waters of Chicago Bay were filled with filth and trash dragged in during the disaster. It was one huge mess. Under contract from the federal government's disaster relief program, Triumph, Inc., set to work. It was the largest and most focused delta effort ever, surpassing even the failed attempt to foil the Devastator's plans. After all, there are a lot more pure deltas than there ever were alphas out there. The deltas had the place looking much better in short order. Well, it actually took the better part of a year, but by the time summer rolled around in 1977, the place was ready for some new construction. And so the cranes rolled in.

THI MAN WITH THI PLAN When Archer envisioned Crescent City, he wasn't thinking about just any city. He had a plan. Most older cities simply grew up from whatever they happened to start out as. The streets were often laid down haphazardly, seemingly with no rhyme nor reason. That wasn't going to happen in Crescent City.

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Archer 's architects labored day and night for the entire year that his delta teams cleared the rubble from the city. When they were done, they submitted their plan to the Illinois legislature for approval. With President Kermedy's tacit backing, the scheme was overwhelmingly approved.

THI LAYOUT Crescent City is flat-out huge. It extends all the way around Chicago Bay, which is basically a monstrous, circular hole with a diameter of about 50 miles . This stretches from what was once the northern suburbs of Chicago, right to the edges of Gary, Indiana (which was spared from the destruction). The city streets are actually laid out in ever-expanding crescents that follow the edge of Chicago Bay. The first street is called Bayshore Drive, and it runs along a huge cement levy that prevents erosion from hauling Crescent City into the bay. The streets that run concentric to Bayshore Drive are called First Crescent, Second Crescent, Third Crescent, and so on. These run all the way out to Ninth Crescent before they give way to the older grid-style roads tha t used to pass through the Chicago suburbs. Cross-streets run through the crescent streets, cormecting them like spokes in a wagon wheel. The first of these is Center Street. This runs directly east-west from the bay, and the corner of Center and Bayshore is the ritziest address in town. The cross-streets rurming clockwise from here are called North 1s l Street, North 2 nd , and so on. (Here's a quick tip for you out-of­ towners: Crescent names are spelled out, while street names are ordinal numbers.)

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The ones tha t run coun terclockwise are called South l>t, South 2nd , and so on. This is all easy to understand when you're looking at it on a map, but when you're wandering around downtown on foot, it's a whole different story. What it boils down to is that there are two kinds of streets in town. The crescents are all curved, so if you look down them, they eventually disappear around corners. However, they follow a wide curve, so you don't really notice this when you walk along a block, only when you look down a crescent. The "streets," though, are straight as an arrow, right up until they run into the suburbs that used to sprawl around Chicago.

THE LAND Originally Crescent City only covered the land inside the crescents themselves. This extends out about two miles from Chicago Bay, roughly the amount of land that was devastated when Lake Michigan rolled into the hole where the city of Chicago had been. Over the years, though, some of the older suburbs have been annexed, and the city has grown beyond its original, not-so-humble space. The land is hard and rocky, perfect for building skyscrapers on, just like the ones Chicago had been so famous for. People nostalgic for the old city claim that the Crescent City skyline doesn't hold a candle to that of the city it replaced. If you ask someone a bit more unbiased though, you almost always hear that Crescent City has one of the most amazing skylines on earth. This is only marred by the dozens of cranes that always seem to be either building a new place or rebuilding one that's been knocked down.

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TH£ (ITY TODAY

Crescent City (or the Big Croissant as it's called by the French--mostly because the city's flaky) is a city with many facets. In one sense, it represents the greatest horror that deltas can have upon the world, since every time you look at the bay, you can't help but remember the battle in which so many millions of lives were lost. On the other hand, it's a town of hope. At least that's what the Crescent City Council (also known as C3 or "C cubed" --sometimes councilors are called"cubes") would like the world to think. Crescent City has adopted a delta-friendly policy despite the fact that it's built around what's basically a watery gravesite for millions killed in the worlds most notorious delta incident.

THf (ITY'S fHL The city has been described as looking like "new nostalgia." Archer and the rest of the city plarmers wanted a place that people would feel at home in right away, so they took pains to reconstruct some of Chicago's landmarks (Superior Park is basically Grant Park). However, they also wanted it to look like it was on the cutting edge of tomorrow, so we've got buildings like the Delta Academy and the Triumph Tower. There are lots of art deco elements, but they surround buildings constructed from glass and steel. The builders used the opportunity to go wild with the architecture, though, so just about every building within downtown Crescent City has its own kind of identity.

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No block after block of the same kind of places here . Instead, the architecture echoes influences from many different peoples and eras. In that it's quintessentially American, an eclectic blend of the best parts of the past mixed with some of the most exciting visions of the future . This is an important part of the city's identity. It's always reinventing itself for .the future, while keeping an eye on the past. Much of the city is underlit by huge spotlights which playoff the sides of the buildings. This gives the city a sense of drama that other cities just don't have. There are some in the Defiance who claim that the lights are there just so the feds can keep an eye on the city at night, but even those cynics can't deny the magic of the city at night. The tops of many buildings have moving spotlights too, so you can't ever see the stars from the streets of Crescent City. Only the top floors of the Triumph Tower and have that kind of unobstructed view, and then only when Archer orders the lights shut off, which he only does when the mood strikes him. The skyline of Crescent City is staggeringly impressive, although it's best seen from a boat on the bay or from the heights of the 1-90/ 94 overpass that was built over the surrounding suburbs to bring traffic into the heart of the city. If you get a chance, be sure to take one of the Chicago Bay tours at night. It's a breathtaking experience, and rumors that these boats have been attacked by some sort of watery beasts seem to be unsubstantiated. The people I've interviewed sure thought that's what was happening, but no one ever actually saw anything.

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THf PROMHHfAN (ITY The fact is that even though the city went up in record time-mostly due to registered delta labor from Triumph, Inc., and other, smaller companies-the construction industry here is still booming. After all, they've always go to come in and clean up after the massive delta battles that rock the place on a fairly regular basis. That's where the city gets another of its many nicknames: Prometheus. That's after the ancient god who brought fire to the people, but paid for it by being tied to a rock where a bird could eat his liver. Worse yet, it regrew every night, so the bird could come back and have its ravenous way with Prometheus again the next morning. Living in Crescent City is kind of like being Prometheus. It seems like every week or so someone's knocking something down, whether during a delta battle or in the aftermath. Still, we keep rebuilding the place. Sometimes it seems pointless, since we know the places are going to get damaged again, but we're just stubborn that way. Spotted throughout the best parts of the city, there are buildings covered with scaffolding, their tops shorn off. Streets are often blocked off until rubble and bodies can be cleared. There's even one tall building-the New Hancock Building-that's still standing, even though a hole's been blown clean through the center of it. The construction crews came in and shored up the weakened parts and then actually built around the hole, leaving the path through the heart of the building intact. And all around town, there are holes in the ground where buildings have been knocked clear down to their foundation so they can be built back up again.

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THE ALPHA THREAT The fact is that most deltas don't have the kind of power necessary to actually knock over an entire building, but they can sure knock holes in them. Punch enough holes in any structure, and it's going to come crashing down around your ears. Worse yet are the occasional alphas that manage to break out of New A1catraz. You'd think these losers would spend their time putting as much distance between themselves and their prison as possible. Instead, lots of them set up shop right here in town. Now, these alphas often have just the kind of power you'd need to knock down a skyscraper or at least level a brownstone, and they're not afraid to use it. By definition, any alphas who didn't disappear during the Bicentennial Battle or directly afterward were in delta-proof jails. You see, these places have a power­ dampening field that surrounds them. This keeps the delta prisoners in and keeps any other deltas from mounting successful jailbreaks. Sure, it doesn't keep people from trying, but it's a rare day when someone manages to leave the Fortress or New A1catraz without a warden's permission. The theory is that this field is what kept the jailed alphas from going missing during the Vanishing. I mean, think about it. While they're under the dampening field, these people have no more powers than the average reg. Whatever called away all the deltas must not have spotted the ones who had their lights hidden under a federally sponsored, concertina wire­ lined bushel. Every now and then, an alpha manages to get out, whether by jailbreak or actually on parole.

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Inevitably, they fall back into their old patterns of behavior-most of them were in jail for a reason after all-and it's up to Delta Prime or even the Defiance to bring them down. Rumor has it that the Primers have even inducted some alpha prisoners into its ranks on some kind of a work­ release program. If so, the government sure is being quiet about it. Maybe they realize that even a public as oppressed as ours is going to protest having violent criminals released onto the streets to "protect" us. The more suspicious members of the Defiance even suspect that the feds sometimes release these alphas from time to time, just to inspire fear in the populace. As Kennedy'S proven over and over again, a frightened popUlation is a controllable population.

THE GOVERNMENT

Crescent City works under the traditional system that Chicago once had. The city's split up into a number of wards, each of which has a representative known as an alderperson to the city council. There's also a mayor to execute the council's desires. In a way, it's a microcosm of the federal government. The council acts like Congress, and the mayor's like the President. However, because the country's been under martial law since long before the founding of Crescent City, neither the mayor nor any of the alderpersons have actually ever been elected to the pOSitions they hold. In fact, Mayor Alan Jefferson was appointed by the governor of Illinois, and Jefferson in turn appointed each of the alderpersons in the city.

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This means that everyone in Crescent City's goverrunent, from the top on down, indirectly-or even directly sometimes-owes his or her position to JFK.

THf MAYOR You may have heard about how, back in the old days, Mayor Daley used to run Chicago like one vast, incredibly corrupt but equally efficient political machine. Daley had nothing on Jefferson. "Old Jeff," as the papers sometimes call him, has the city in an iron grip. With the full backing of President Kennedy and Ben Archer, there's little that can stand in the mayor's way. He appoints people he trusts into positions of power throughout the city, which-of course-they abuse.

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Jefferson doesn't really care, and neither apparently do most of the citizens. Even if the city's full of corruption, it runs pretty damn smoothly. All you've got to know is who's hands to grease, and it's easy to get just about anything done. As far as public safety goes, there's not an easier big city in which to reside in America . From all accounts, Mayor Jefferson's in cahoots with Don Vito Gabriel, the head of the Crescent City mob. Anytime the criminal element in the city gets out of control, Jefferson cracks his whip, and Gabriel makes sure his people fall in line. If the problem comes from outside the Gabriel family, there are lots of different ways to take care of it. Maybe the Crescent City police department suddenly decides to launch a "war on crime" against the interlopers at the

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mayor's request. Or perhaps there's a mob war. As long as it's confined to the criminal element-and sometimes even if it's not-the police often let such things run their course. After alt if it's only a bunch of gangbangers killing each other, few people are going to complain. If things really get out of controt the mayor can always call in Delta Prime. Apparently the trade-off for having the largest delta prison in American right off the coast of your city is that you also get the Delta Prime headquarters downtown. (It was moved here back in 1980/ right at the same time that construction on the New Alcatraz federat delta-ready prison began. No coincidence tha t.) You can ask the people who got killed in the last crossfire whether or not they think it's a good deal.

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THE CITY COUNCIL The city council is made up of a bunch of the mayor's toadies. Every now and then, one of them gets it into his head that he's got some real power due to his position, and he challenges the mayor on one issue or another. These people never make it in their office long. Unfortunately, the mayor never asks problem councilors to resign. He just makes life uncomfortable enough to make them want to leave the position far behind. There are currently 50 different wards in Crescent City. These are theoretically evenly divided among the city's nearly two million citizens. (There are over seven million people in the metropolitan area .) However/ that's not always the case.

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The city council spends most of its time dealing with the smaller issues of the city government, leaving the larger decisions to the mayor himself. It's almost like being a member of Britain's House of Lords. You've got the title, but really there's little to show for it other than a good table at the best restaurants. Most councilors can't do a whole lot to improve the situations that people in the city find themselves in. Sure, they can get a health inspector to look the other way, and they can get a pothole filled, but compared to the power the mayor wields, these are petty things. However, they can certainly make life miserable for those that cross them, and for this reason alone, most people treat the councilors with respect.

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You'd think that kind of incident might turn a person against unregistered deltas like the Defiants, but not Marita. She seemed to recognize the problem for what it was, and she's since become a staunch supporter of civil rights, something we don't have many of in the Crescent City government. For her troubles, Suarez has withstood aU-but-overt threats on her life from other members of the council and the Crescent City police. There have, in fact, been over a dozen attempts on her life, but she's managed to survive them all. Many less-brave individuals might have stepped down from Suarez's position long ago, but not her. She's determined to have her way or die trying.

COUNCILORS AT LARGf The two best-known councilors are "Big" Bill Macy and M arita Suarez. As ward bosses go, Macy's one of the biggest, and I'm not just talking about the fact he wears the longest belts I've ever seen. There's been talk tha t Macy might actually make a play for the mayor's position at some point. People have even seen Macy dining at the governor's mansion in Springfield, but nothing's come of it yet. Still, you can be sure there'll be no good from that unholy coalition. Suarez, on the other hand, is a woman of the people. It amazes me sometimes that she's still in office, but as I mentioned before, the mayor refuses to summarily remove people from office. Suarez kind of inherited her position from her husband. He was killed by a stray shot in a delta battle in Superior Park during the Taste of Crescent City festival a few summers back.

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THf POI.ICf The police in rescent City are pretty much like you'd expect them to be-if you know real cops and not what you see ev ry Tuesday night on CCPD Blue. Some of them are good-hearted men and women who are there to do their job: to serve and protect the people of Crescent City. Others are jackbooted goons ready to beat the city into submission. These people take what they want and smack down anyone brave enough to protest. There are far too many of these kinds of officers on the force today, but I suppose that has to do with the police commissioner: Stuart Fleming. Fleming's from the old school of police work. By that, I mean the really old school of the '20s and '30s, when a person's rights didn't mean a thing if they got in the way of a cop on the job. That kind of thing thinned out a bit in the '50s, but with martial law declared

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in 1964, it was suddenly in vogue again. Under Kennedy's rule, it's been that way ever since. Fleming's as crooked as a switchback street. He takes payoffs from the mob, from Triumph, Inc., and even from the feds. In short, if you want the police to look the other way in Crescent City, all you've got to do is make a donation to the Police Officers' Widows and Orphans Fund-in the name of Commissioner Fleming, of course-and you're all set. There are some good cops on the force. I know some of them personally. However, they're few and far between. Whether that's because they're all afraid to take a stand against their commissioner or they're all just evil, power-mad bastards, it's impossible to tell. In my younger days, I'd have been more willing to give someone the benefit of the doubt. These days, I always just assume the worst. I save myself a lot of time that way.

THE PEOPLE As I mentioned before, there are 50 different wards in Crescent City. Many of these wards are drawn along the lines of the neighborhoods that were planned out in Crescent City, but some actually cross the standard lines like a drunken snake. When the city was founded just over 20 years ago, Ben Archer had a strong vision for what he wanted "his" city to look like. From all accounts, present­ day Crescent City doesn't look much like the original plan. Sure, you can lay down all sorts of zoning laws and the like, but the fact is that people tend to like to live near their families and other people they know.

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With Crescent City, there was some hope that it would be more of a melting pot than any other city in America, but it just didn't work out that way. Instead, we've got some of the most vibrant ethnic neighborhoods of any city in the world. We've got Greektown, Chinatown, the Indian district, the Italian section, the Hispanic barrio, an African­ American area, and so on. Plus all the white folks that somehow always seem to end up in the nicer parts of town. Actually, it's not as bad as that made it sound. The fact is that Crescent City, like many American cities, is divided into neighborhoods just as often by money as by race. And there's one hell of a gulf between the haves and have­ nots. Either way, things here aren't all that bad in any neighborhood-at least structurally speaking. The fact is that there are no old buildings in Crescent City. Every structure in the entire city is less than 25 years old. Of course, that doesn't mean that some of them aren't rundown. The streets gangs quickly worked their way into the low-income housing neighborhoods (better known as "the Lost Projects"), and certain parts of the city resemble warzones in third-world countries more than neighborhoods in the newest metropolis on the planet.

THE NfiGHBORHOODS The area in the dead center of town, right near the intersection of Center Street and Bayshore Drive, is by far the nicest in the entire region. Here, people live like royalty in luxury high-rise condos and world-class apartments. The shops and restaurants here are on a par with the finest places in the world, and the rents are on that same level.

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The Near Southside of the city is the home of the Lost Projects. This is where the people who work the grunt jobs Downtown live. Many of them are too poor to afford cars, and they rely on public transportation-both buses and the El-to get to and from work. You can always tell which directions the buses and the trains roll from Downtown. The ones that stick to the north are pristine clean. Those that move through Near Southside are covered with graffiti. Some of the tags are pretty darrm good work, but most are simply the work of vandals who barely know one end of a spraycan from the other. Lower Southside is a blue-collar area, filled with factory districts interspersed with modest housing tracts for the people who work at the plants. Most of the people here squeak



out a good living and keep their heads down. Lots of them are just happy they don't live any closer to the heart of the city where most of the delta conflicts always seem to take place. The Lower Southside continues all the way down to Indiana these days, almost merging with East Chicago and Gary. Honestly, I don't understand how people live in this part of the world. The foul air always makes me gag. The Near Northside is known to most people as Triumphville. This region of town is filled with young people and young families. The upper middle class mix with students here. The older people often work for Triumph, Inc., in one capacity or another, and the college kids take classes at either the University of Crescent City (UCC) or the University of Illinois-Crescent City (UICC).

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DCC's by far the bigger schooe just recently joining the Big Ten athletic conference. DICC's considered the preppy older brother of VCc, even though the hvo schools were founded a t the same time. The Far Northside is the high-tech portion of the city. This area is filled with all sorts of massive office buildings that would be dwarfed by the skyscrapers downtown. It's also where some of the wealthier families in Crescent City live. If you've got lots of money and you feel like actually having a driveway instead of an underground parking structure, this is where you want to be. Some of the houses along Bayshore Drive in the Far Nor thside are truly magnificent mansions. Real estate prices here are at an all time high, with many of the estates being snatched up in multimillion dollar deals.

PUBLIC TRANSPORTAI'ION One thing Archer got right when he set to making the world's most modern metropolis was the public transportation. American cities, particularly those in the wide-open Midwest, traditionally have lousy means of public transport. Not so in Moontown. (The moon's a crescent, see? Bah! I never liked it much either, but for some reason it stuck.) Crescent City is serviced by an extensive subway system that's still called the UEI" -short for eleva ted train-in remembrance of the old Chicago train system. This is so despite the fact that most of the trains' tracks run underground. There are some lengths of the system that do rise to the third or fourth story of nearby buildings, though, and these are what remind people of the old system.

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MAJOR BUILDINGS

I don't have enough space here to give you a rundown on the entire city, but I'm going to at least touch on the highlights.

CITY HALL This large place is built like a huge, glassy cube, giving rise to even more cube references about the people who work there. More than once, the mayor's been accused of not being able to "think outside of the box." Despite its basic, utilitarian style, it's got some art deco trimmings, like the large, red, neon sign that reads "Crescent City Hall" in Cotton Club­ style letters. The cube stands alone in the center of a large city block in the heart of Downtown, surrounded by trees and an open park. The edges of the block are lined by huge cement planters full of shrubs and flowers. There's enough room to walk between these, but not enough for a car full of explosives to get through, which I'm pretty sure is the point.

THE CRESCENT AMPHITHEAUR This is a large, open-air concert setting in the center of Superior Park. (See page 70 for more on that.) It's shaped like a classic, old bandshell, except the seats are all top-of-thc-line, plastic-covered folding stadium seats, complete with cup holders for jumbo­ sized drinks. The area above the stage is roofed, although the rest of the region is open to the air, even in the expensive seats. (There are cheap seats on the lawn out back.) There are massive TV screens to either side of the stage, perfect for concerts or making speeches.

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In fact, this is where Kennedy made his famous speech for the official "grand opening" of Crescent City. Of course, this was in 1980, years after people had started living here again, but no one seemed to care much. There are tall bulletproof-glass shields between the stage and the crowd. They were installed for Kennedy's speech and never taken out. Ever since that incident in Miami when that crackpot in the crowd took a shot at Madonna, performers have been extremely security conscious. For that reason, the Crescent Amphitheater's always at the top of any tour date list. The bulletproof shields front a trench that's always filled with either security guards or cops in riot gear. In Crescent City, you don't rush the stage unless you're hopped up on something. Which of course means it happens at least once at just about every popular­ music concert.

THE DELTA ACADEMY This one's a doozy. This is where registered deltas from across the country come to train. The school logo is a sharply cut diamond, which supposedly represents the pressure the students go through in the course of their studies. When they're done, they're harder than diamonds, it's said. The shape of the building actually follows the logo's design. The bottom 50 floors stand like an inverted pyramid stuffed tip-first into the ground, and the 70 floors above that are basically the same pyramid slapped atop the other. Theoretically this means there are at least 20 floors extending into the bedrock beneath the city too, but rumor has it that there are actually far more.

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The Academy actually has its own underground EI stop that lets off on the third floor down. The regular trains stop here, but only a few people ever get on or off. The security around this place is tighter than a drum. To fit within a city block overlooking Bayshore Drive, the Academy Building had to start out relatively small at the bottom. At its widest point (floor 50), it's as big as the entire block. Underneath that, there's a lot of open space, and this is all paved ovel~ with a lot of cement planters and red brick paths cutting through the bare cement parts. There are also lots of places for people to sit around the planters and eat lunch or have clandestine meetings. If you're looking for such a place yourself, you could do worse. It's pretty gutsy to hang around outside the Academy if you're an unregistered delta, but you wouldn't be the first one to do it. Security here is tight but mostly transparent. Small cameras are all over the place, but they're hard to spot unless you know they're there. The edges of the top part of the Pyramid, as the place is sometimes called, are lit with a single line of neon lights, making the place really stand out in the Crescent City skyline at night. It looks like an outline of a pyramid floating in midair. Of course, the sides of the pyramid are then triangles, each forming the letter delta.

MEMORIAL flUO This is the football arena for the Crescent City football team, the Crushers. It looks like the old Soldier Field, where the Bears used to play, and It's open to the air and has real, natural grass.

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Folks in these parts don' t care for those wussy domes! Even when temperatures plunge below freezing and there's snow on the field, you can always count on some fan to be out there with his shirt off. Football's meant to be played outside after all. And compared to the weather the Packers get up in Lambeau Field, the winters at Memorial Field are like a week in the Bahamas. The entire place is a living memorial to the people who died in the Bicentennial Battle. In the center of the west side of the stadium (which runs lengthwise north-south), there stands a statue of Superior leading some of the world's most notable heroes into their final battle. At dusk, when the orangish haze of the sunset settles over the westward-looking figures, it's a truly inspiring piece of art. And I'm a card-carrying Defiant. (And please, for God's sake, don't e­ mail me about getting yourself a membership card. That was a joke.)

POLICE DEPARTMENT This building was actually modeled after the police department in Beverly Hills, only it's a lot bigger, taller, and more menacing. Nothing in California can hold a candle to downtown Crescent City, it seems-at least architecturally speaking. Like just about every major building in town, the place is liberally lit with spotlights at night. This not only dramatically casts the place against the dark of night, it also makes it easier to spot potential intruders. Few people are crazy enough to try to actually try to break into the CCPD's headquarters, but it's been known to happen. The building's also the site of the city jail after all.

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The Crescent City jail isn't certified as a safe holding facility for deltas, but it sees some use for that in a pinch. Nullification fields are apparentl y really difficult to pull off-there being only a few in the entire world that I know of-and the CCPD just doesn't rate. Most delta prisoners are held here only shortly before being run out to New Alcatraz in a police helicopter. A few-those with more manageable powers-are detained here on a more permanent basis. Commissioner Fleming's office is in the top of the building's central tower. He tells people it's so he can look down on the city like a concerned parent. More like a hungry vulture, I say. Chief Newcomb maintains his office a bit closer to his officers-and the ground .

PRIMf HfADQUARTfRS This is the main field office of Delta Prime in the entire Midwest. In fact, it's the largest DP facility outside of the main office in Alexandria. With the Delta Academy and New Alcatraz in town-not to mention a vibrant Defiant community, thank you very much-Crescent City's a hotbed of delta activity. The Primers recognize this, and so they coordinate most of their domestic activities out of this centrally located office. Delta Prime's chief officer in the area is a woman known as Charlene "Charlie" Parker. She's one tough, old bird, and she commands the respect of the people under her with her hard­ nosed attitude and her iron will. Back in the early days of Delta Squadron, Parker was known as the

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Canary. She actually fought alongside the Yankee and Superior and the rest as a teenager in World War II. As a pure (non-alpha) delta, Parker worked her way up the ranks of Delta Squadron and later Delta Prime. But she hit a glass ceiling due to the fact her powers never progressed. At least that was true up until the Vanishing. Soon after most of the alphas went missing, Parker starting savagely climbing the DP ladder, eventually landing herself a job as the head of the Crescent City office. The DP building is a modern manTel. It's a single pyramid that stabs upward into the night like a glittering blade. Its walls are so steep that they almost look like they're straight, but they gradually narrow until they meet almost on a restricted-access, open-air observation deck and helipad on the lOOth floor.

SUPERIOR PARK This massive strip of greenery sits in the center of the city's museum district, just to the north of Center Street. It takes up several blocks along Bayshore Drive, and it stands directly across from the Bayshore Marina, the place at which Crescent City's rich and famous dock their yachts. On a hot summer day in Crescent City, the place is absolutely packed. This is where the city holds its Taste of Crescent City food and music celebration over the Fourth of July weekend every year. It's also the home of the Crescent Amphitheater (see page 67 for all the details), the center of the yearly Crescent City Blues Festival. The park's even got a replica of the original Buckingham Foun tain in the center of it, recreated in loving detail. It's a favorite meeting place in the park, because everyone knows where it is .

SUPERIOR SQUARE This is the Times Square of Crescent City, and it's right at the heart of it all: Center Street and Bayshore Drive. It's an open area of about two city blocks (one north and one south of Center Street), and it's surrounded by huge buildings, lOO-foot-tall TV screens, and massive billboards, neon lights, and stock and news tickers. Just off of Superior Square is the Theater District, home to a half-dozen of the best theaters in the country. With the downfall of Manhattan, most production companies have packed up their bags and moved out here. Sure, Crescent City may not be the safest city in the world, but it' s a far cry from the dangers that run rampant through the heart of the Big Apple. Superior Square is one of the most commonly named places when people are asked where they want to be on the last evening of 1999. Whether you consider that New Year 's Eve or the next to be the last one of the millennium, you can be sure it's going to be one hell of a party. Personally, I'm staying home that night. I don't really believe in all this Y2K crap, but there's more than one nutjob delta out there, and that's a perfect night for one of those apocalypse-cult types to make sure the world-ending prophecies he's bought into actually come to pass. Right in the heart of Superior Square stands a massive statue of Superior himself. It's guarded day and night, but that doesn't stop people from messing with it. Some Defiant actually made off with the thing's head last year, and the Primers still haven't been able to track it down. In the meantime, the mayor commissioned another head, but honestly, it's not quite the same.

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THE TRIUMPH TOWER This is the home of the largest employer of delta labor in the entire city, and it's a fortress. The place is absolutely huge, taking up at least six city blocks. The streets that would run through the block still do, just through reinforced concrete tunnels tha t actually pierce the building at street level. This is the latest "tallest building in the world," standing 150 stories tall, and it's the centerpiece of the city. It's an art deco masterpiece, lit all over with glowing spotlights. At different times of the year, Archer has the building's maintenance crew put different-colored filters over the lights, giving it a festive feel appropriate for each holiday. Christmas and the Fourth wouldn't be the same in Crescent City without the Triumph Tower looking down on us all. The building starts out covering all six blocks, but most of the building ends around floor 100 or so. Then five towers stab out of the rest of the place, one at each corner, and one at the center of the side faCing the bay. Between the towers are battlements of offices that are 10 stories each, lining the edges of the building. The towers each reach 40 stories into the air, with the central tower going all 70 stories up. Ben Archer's office is at the top of that tower, 150 floors above the ground. Some people say the rarified air up there makes people lightheaded, which is why Archer likes to conduct his business there. The place is kind of like the city itself. It would have been almost impossible to build without delta labor, but no one ever seems to mention that. Especially not JFK.

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UNITED STATES Of ANARCHY With the Kennedy propaganda machine being what it is, most people don't know a whole lot about what's going on in this great big world of ours. After all, it' s in the feds ' interest to make sure that you don't know any more about the actual situation than they w ant you to. We're here to put a dent in-if not an actual end to-all of tha t. There's a lot more going on in the world than I can cram into this little overview, but I'll try to touch on as many high points as I can. If you 're interested in a particular place, go ahead and search the website for other articles. Maybe you'll find something on what you' re looking for. If you can' t find out about what you want to know, go ahead and e-mail me about it. If I get enough requests about an area or situation-or if the request just tickles my fancy-I'll make a real effort to learn m ore abou t it, and I'll report in here with anything I can find out.

THE HArlIRE Of INfORMATION There's no way that I can make these reports as complete as I' d like them to be . For one, there's just me and a legion of volunteers out there, reporting on whatever we can find out. We don' t have a highly trained staff of experienced, full-time professionals backing us up. On the other hand, we aren't subject to government censorship of any kind. If you hear about something on your local or national news-whether on TV or on the radio or in the paper-turn here next, and you might be able to find out a bit more about it than the feds would like for you to know.



As they say in business school, caveat emptor, or "buyer beware." That means that, as a consumer, it's up to you to take care of yourself. You've got to evaluate the truth in anything anyone ever tells you. Few people out there have the power I have to know if people are telling me the truth, and even I get fooled from time to time . And, no, I'm not going to tell you how. Caveat emptor means you should take anything anyone tells you with a grain of salt. That includes what you read here. I do the best I can to verify every bit of information I publish, but sometimes that's not always possible. Of course, if you're talking about something you get from an "official" news source, than you're going to need more like a whole shaker of salt.

TIMELINESS The other big problem with a guide like this is that it can only ever be a snapshot of a raging river. The world changes on a daily basis, sometimes in amazing ways, and it's impossible for a small publication like the Delta Times to keep up with it all. For that reason, I tend to concentrate more on easily made generalizations than more newsy bits of information. Those newsy bits often aren't relevant for more than a week, and sometimes they're even out of date by the time I get the material posted on the web. Nobody's more frustrated about it than 1, but that's the nature of the beast. Now that we've gotten all the disclaimers out of the way, let's get on with the guide itself. It's the best, most accurate, and most important we could make it, and I hope you get some real use out of it. Either way, good luck!

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AMERICA THE BATTERED

That's right. Once it 'was "America the Beautiful," but it's just not that way any more. I'm not saying that there aren't still some really pretty parts of the country. That's not the point. As a people, it seems to me we sometimes act less like a na tion of winners and more like a battered wife. We've been beaten and bruised by someone we claim to love-and who claims to love us. To any outsider, the answer is obvious: Leave the bastard. But there's some fear there. If you leave the nation, could you survive on your own? Could you hope to find something better? And like a battered spouse, deep down we still love the bastard-or at least that's what we tell ourselves.

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I'm here to tell you that it's time for a change. Like that world-famous delta Bob Marley once sang, "You've got to stand up for your rights!" If we just keep taking the abuse from our government, then nothing's ever going to change. We've got to stand up and say something-do something­ about it. Until that happens, we' re never going to win back our freedoms . The saddest part is our rights weren' t taken from us. We gave them up. We were so scared about outlaw threats that we actually s urrendered our rights willingly. And now we're going to have to fight to take them back. That's enough soapbox for now. You're not here for a speech. You're here to learn more about the once-and­ future greatest country on the face of this planet.

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ATLANTA

We'll lead off with one of the most tragic stories around. Once the belle of the ball in the last century, Atlantawas enjoying something of a revival in the '80s, once again reclaiming the title of "the capitol of the South." Unfortunately, that was all cut short in 1988. When real culprits behind the failed assassination attempt of Soviet Premiere General Mikhail Tretyak were brought to light-and they were found to be American-Mighty Misha's vengeance was swift and terrible. The nukes he launched destroyed both Atlanta and San Francisco, turning their downtown areas into smoking, radioactive craters and killing millions of people. There hadn't been a disaster of that magnitude since the Bicentennial Battle. r don't know why most of the world didn't go up in a cloud of glow-in-the­ dark smoke that fateful week. r suppose we can thank our lucky stars that Misha didn't launch an all-out attack and that we didn't overreact to the assault ourselves. It would have been so easy for the violence to escalate to a point at which the survivors would have counted themselves lucky to only have to hang out in their bomb shelters until their grandchildren were grown. That said, the destruction in Atlanta was horrifying. The worst part wasn't the blast itself. The people at ground zero died mercifully quickly. There was a great flash of light, then they were gone. The people on the ou tskirts of town or in the near suburbs had it much worse. Many of them were scorched by the radiation. They lingered for days on



end until death finally took them. Even with the Red Cross and the tremendous federal disaster relief team that was on the spot, there were just too many injured people for them all to be saved. Of the ones who managed to find some medical treatment, most of them died within days anyhow. There's only so much you can do for someone who's taken a lethal dose of radiation. The region around Atlanta was a charnel house for weeks on end . Everywhere within about 10 miles of the center of town was knocked flat, and 20 miles outside of that, things were considered radioactively hot. To enter this no-go zone was tantamount to a death sentence. Of course, an incident like that spawned a whole bunch of deltas, bu t most of them died as well. Being able to fly or shoot blasts from your hands doesn't do you a whole lot of good against radiation sickness. Still, there were some who were far enough away from the effect to survive, and a few closer in were even lucky enough to be saved by their powers. Today, Atlanta's still a no-go zone. If you're close enough, r understand you can still see a soft, radioactive glow coming off the ruins of the city at night. Some foolhardy souls have actually resettled in the ou tskirts of town. There are some prime pieces of real estate out there, and you can have them pretty cheaply if you like. In fact, Congress passed the Radioactive Homestead Act in '89, which was designed to get the areas repopulated. Anyone who actually lives on a property can file a clam for it and get it for pennies on the dollar­ and that's after it's already been devalued by the disaster. Not too many people have signed up for the plan.

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BOSTON

Beantown looks pretty good for a major American city a t the turn of the millennium. Sure, it's had its share of problems, but it's gotten away comparatively unscathed. Boston's population has surged over the past 20 years or so, mostly due to the exodus of people from New York City. Other cities from Philadelphia to Washington, DC, have also felt the crunch, but Boston seems to have taken the brunt of it. Perhaps it's because Boston is the unofficial gadgeteer capitol in this hemisphere. All sorts of tech-minded deltas congregate around the brilliant minds at MIT, hoping to spark-or steal-ideas off of each other and advance their research and their fortunes. In fact, MIT has even opened its own College of Para technological Research, better known as the CPR. Some people joke that MIT's hoping that the CPR can pump some new life into the American economy. They can laugh all they want, but so far it seems to be working. The real benefit of MIT's CPR is the testing facilities they offer to their researchers. They've got buildings that are pretty much explosion proof, and believe me, those claims have been tested time and time again. Of course, the feds have first crack at any technology developed a t the CPR. By law, any deltas working there are working for the federal government, and the fruits of their labor are owned entirely by Uncle Sam. Many tech-oriented deltas hire on here instead of with Delta Prime once they finish their stint in Delta Squadron. Deltas working at the CPR

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are treated well, especially compared to other posts they might end up with. Competition to get into the college is pretty stiff. There are no teaching requirements for those given jobs as professors at the CPR. It's a pure research institution. Still, a few notable professors, like Dr. Alan Hambly, do handle the occasional graduate-level seminar. Even with the high level of maintenance that most delta-built bits of tech require, the results are so amazing that the government's been willing to pour literally billions of dollars into the CPR. In fact, that's where the first delta-dampening field was developed. Before that, the government had to take extreme measures to keep captured deltas imprisoned. Thankfully, no one's been able to figure out how to produce more than a few of these devices, and their power requirements are equivalent to that of a large city. Of course, when there's a delta crime involving amazing tech, this is where the feds turn first.

CRESCENT CITY

In my not-so-unbiased opinion, there is no greater city on the planet than Crescent City. Its very existence is a symbol of how we can pull together to pull victory out of the jaws of defeat, of how we can go on to survive and even thrive in the aftermath of the ultimate disaster. In short, it's all about human resilience . J feel so strongly about this place, that I've written on it extensively elsewhere. If you want to learn more about the newest metropolis on Earth, turn to page 54.

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DALLAS

The people of Texas have long had a reputation for thinking of their state as a whole 'nother country. If that had been true in '63, Kennedy would have bombed city of Dallas flat in retaliation for the attempt on his life and the death of his wife. As it is, Kennedy has never forgotten that it was Dallas that was the site of the most traumatic incident of his life. He's been back to the city several times since, but always with even more security than the normal squadron of Secret Service deltas that usually surround him at all times. The name of Dallas has become associated with shame, and the taint has grown to affect the entire state. When traveling outside of their home state, most Texans conceal their drawl

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and do their best to hide their heritage. This is especially true of deltas. A "delta from Dallas" is immediately met with suspicion by most people. Most people in the country have bought into the conspiracy theory that more deltas were involved in the assassination attempt than were reported in the Warren Commission Report. Any Texan Defiant old enough to have possibly taken part in the atrocity is immediately under suspicion by the general public, ironclad alibi or no. Even Defiants too young to have possibly taken part in the massacre are mistrusted by most. Of course, the people of Texas don't really take all of this lying down. There's a independence movement that was spawned in the state back in the early '80s, and since then it's done nothing but grow in popularity.

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A lot of deltas (both Defiant and otherwise) support the notion of an independent Texas, but it's never going to happen. At least not without a war. Kennedy'S gone on record that there's no way the country's going to lose a state on his watch, and it doesn't look like his watch is going to end anytime soon. That hasn't stopped any of the talk in the Lone Star State. In fact, there's a group of Defiants calling themselves the Texas Dangers that's thrown themselves into the independence effort. They haven't actually gotten to the point of resorting to terrorist acts, but they do what they can to make life difficult for federal employees in their home state. The Dangers have been negotiating with Texas government, hoping to get some concessions. Rumor has it that there's some kind of deal tha t' s been cut in which the country of Texas would agree to award deltas their civil rights. All the Defiants have to do in return is pick the right side when the bickering turns violent. In the meantime, the public seems to have an ongoing love-hate relationship with anything Defiant. When the Defiants are busy hassling the feds-or at least giving the Primers headaches­ then they're the darlings of the ball. Of course, not all Defiants are as politically motivated as others, and those that cause problems for the community are openly hated by all. It points to a real perception problem the Defiance has. Anyone who doesn't register calls herself a Defiant, whether she supports our general goals or not. Because of that, we get lots of murderers, terrorists, and thieves grouped in with us. Those kinds of friends the rest of us really don't need-at least from a public relations point of view.

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DETROIT

Detroit, like New York, is a city that's been torn apart by the "delta problem. " In Detroit it's mostly delta-on-delta violence, although a good portion of the city's been damaged in the crossfire the Detroit Free Press often refers to as "colla teral damage." Detroit is the home of dozens of gangs, many of which have delta members or are even run by deltas. Some of these people claim to be part of the Defiance, but in most cases this is only to give themselves a veneer of respectability in some quarters and terror in others. In fact only one gang has done anything to really back up its claims to be part of the Defiance: the Motown Warlords . Despite their violent name, the Warlords preach using violence only in self-defense. Unfortunately some members of the gang believe in the credo, "The best defense is a strong offense." The Warlords' leader is a man known as Juwan Webber. Webber's a strong, tall African-American with skin tough enough to bounce shells off of. He's survived dozens of assassination attempts, enough to make some of his foes claim he's a ghost. Even Rasputin himself would have given up on living by now. Webber's an honorable man who believes in what the Defiance stands for, but he's also a gang leader in a difficult position. As the current king of the hill known as Detroit everyone else in town-the cops, the feds, Delta Prime, and every other gang in the city-wants to knock him down. Honestly, it's just a matter of time until Webber either goes down or busts out. If he's taken down by someone,



you can expect the entire city to go up in flames during a gang war that's going to make the situation in New York City look like a Sunday picnic. The other option is that Webber actually manages to wipe out the other gangs, establishing Detroit as its own kind of free city. Of course, if he actually manages that Kennedy's going to have the National Guard and Delta Prime breathing down his neck before he can finish pa tting himself on the back. In that kind of situation, the conflict might go regional, engulfing nearby cities and maybe even reaching Cleveland or even Crescent City. From there, it's just a few short steps to a national civil war. Webber's one hell of a Defiant, but I doubt he's actually got the political acumen to pull off a rebellion of tha t magnitude. Stilt until Kennedy's out of the White House, I'll be pulling for anyone and everyone who stands against him.

DENVER

Denver's the city the Defiance loves to hate. The Mile-High City is one of the few in the country that's actually proud to call itself "Defiant-free." Mayor Ross Higgins has labored long and hard to give his city the squeaky-clean image it has today. He's got a crack platoon of Delta Primers on call with his office at all times, and they're some of the best delta hunters in the country if not the world. The skyscrapers that spire out of the Denver valley in the Colorado high plains stand straight and true, entirely unscarred by the delta battles that have torn other large communities to shreds. The sun that sets in the nearby Rockies

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goes down on a people full of self­ satisfaction in the fact that they've managed to run off just about every hint of the Defiance. The Denver school system's got an early detection system for deltas. It's comprised of specially trained teachers and police officers who constantly monitor the student population, looking for any hint of delta powers. More than that, the police have a team of delta hound officers at their disposal, and they use these deltas to help them sniff out their genetic brethren, no matter how well hid they might be. Thankfully, most hounds have to get within a few yards of a delta to actually detect one that's not using her powers. Unfortunately, they can follow a delta who's actually using her powers as if they were a pack of bloodhounds on the trail of a wounded fugitive. Most newly awakened deltas are too inexperienced to avoid these hunters, and they often find themselves either being drafted or packed off to the Fortress before they barely even realize what's happened to them. The mayor's claim to the contrary, there is a Defiance Movement in the Mile-High City. It's just deep underground. Defiants in Denver almost always wear masks, but no other kinds of costumes. It's a lot easier to ditch a mask and a jacket than it is to actually change clothes. Defiants that are captured in Denver are placed on public trial. The charges are almost always trumped up, but the result is always the same: conviction. In most cases, the Denver DA-one David Twist-does his level best to drum up a capital offense. For this reason alone, Colorado has been the site of more delta execution than any other state, something the mayor trumpets at nearly every press conference he holds.

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LOS AHGELfS The City of Lost Angels, as some people call this place, is full of all sorts of trouble. It's always been that way out here in the land of the surf and sun, but ever since the DRA, it's only gotten worse. First, the place has got nearly as many gang problems as Detroit. There are currently two that are battling it out in a turf war that extends from South Central into Bell. The smart money seems to be on Los Reyes (tha t's Spanish for "the Kings"), but the Everybody Killers (also known as the EKs) are sure making them work for it. Both gangs supplement their standard firepower with delta force, but the more they do, the more they call down the wrath of Delta Prime upon them. The other major group of deltas in the area comes directly from Hollj'\vood. There are a number of different delta talent agencies out in La­ La Land-including a branch of Triumph, Inc.-but the best-known is the Talent Agency. This simply-named group is run by the notorious Brian Selvin, self­ proclaimed agent to the stars. Selvin's fame trades upon the names of his clients, including Schwarzenegger, Stallone, Willis, Chan, and so on. He specializes in deltas who can actually act-or so he claims. There's a lot of work in the movie industry for deltas who can work as stunt doubles. It really increases the realism of the films when you can actually show the bullets bouncing off the hero's chest. The trick, of course, is finding one of these stunt deltas that can act his way out of a paper bag. If you've seen them

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on the screen, chance are that Selvin's their agent. Or at least he's been since Marty Stever was put away. Stever was the top agent for delta talent in Hollywood for years . That lasted right up until Delta Prime figured out he was actually using some unregistered talent who he'd supplied with fake papers. The scandal nearly blew the lid off this town, and this is a city that's used to scandals. It was even rumored that Stever was a delta hlmself, one capable of using some kind of Jedi mind trick to persuade casting agents to give his clients a call. That was never proved, and the fact that Stever 's doing his time in San Quentin rather than New Alcatraz means he's no more a delta than Robin Williams or Darryl Hannah. I mean, at least as far as we know, right?

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Many of the stars Selvin represents do double duty as both actors and members of Delta Prime's reserves. In a pinch, they can be called upon to lend a hand. It's pretty strange to find yourself being chased down the streets by the star of Delta Blues, but believe me, it's even worse to get caught by him. Most reservists aren' t called on in any but the most troubling times. During the last big quake, they really came out of the woodwork, giving a helping hand to anyone in need. They also helped fight those wildfires a couple years back that threatened to engulf some of their mansion-sized homes. Of course, a lot of Defiants did the same thing, but you're never going to read about that in the regular papers. Only right here in Delta Times .

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MIAMI

Will Smith can sing its praises all he wants. This is one city in some serious trouble. Despite what Kennedy might want you to think, deltas aren't the only problem the US faces today. Illegal drugs is another big one, and Miami is the biggest port of entry for these cash crops in the entire country. Miami's also the big city for Hispanic deltas everywhere. The place is crawling with all sorts of deltas from sou th of the border- sometimes way south. They come here thinking that the only way to make a name for themselves is to come to America. They see the licensing deals that some of the Triumph, Inc., deltas have set up for themselves, and they think that they could be making a lot of pesos here.

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A lot of them are also on the run from their own fascist governments. Just about every banana republic from the Rio Grande down to Tierra del Fuego is governed by a petty dictator. You can bet your last dollar that if those fascists weren't actually installed by the US, they maintain their positions by Kennedy's grace. There are a few exceptions to this, of course-like Costa Rica-but I'll get to those la ter. Miami is latino at its heart. The pulse of the city pounds with a salsa beat. Sometimes it seems that the natives' manana philosophy has actually infected the law in the town as well , since active pursuits of Defiants are few and far between. That's not to say the place is a haven for unregistered deltas. Nothing could be further from the truth.

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The local cops usually have their hands full with drug lords and the like, so they're not too worried about rogue deltas until they become an active problem. When that happens though, they smack them down hard. Miami cops-including the Primers-are known for carrying more ordnance than those in just about any other city, except possibly LA. Most carry machine pistols of one kind or another, often with armor-piercing bullets. To an outsider, this might seem fairly extreme, but to the Miami cops, they're just evening the playing field. Smuggling drugs pays pretty damn well, and it seems like the first thing every pusher spends his cash on is an assault rifle and a Kevlar vest. Going up against guys like that with just a revolver is silly. You might as well be using a Super Soaker. Still, if you're looking for a town with a great night life, you've found the place. Most of the bars in town are open until the sun comes up. The rest never close. The people party with a frenzy you don' t see in many other places. Maybe it's the thought that Miami was next on Mighty Misha's list of places to be permanently removed from consideration for the next Olympic games. Maybe it's the Latin influences on the culture. Hell, maybe it's the heat. They've got plenty of that. If you're a delta in Miami, all I can say is stay away from the drug lords. If they think they can find a use for you, they'll make you an offer for your services. If you refuse, they'll make it painfully clear to you how dumb of an idea it is to decline their deal. All in all, it's best to keep your head down and your nose clean.

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NIW YORK (ITY

If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere. Those words are as true today as ever. The fact is that New York City is the toughest place on the planet to be a reg. Even as a delta, it's no walk in the park. Things here were fine up until '64. After all, as the headquarters of the United Nations and the New York Stock Exchange, Manhattan was always under Superior 's watchful eye, along with the eyes of at least a dozen other alphas. That's not to say that New York didn't have its share of delta crime. In fact, it had a lot more than that. Every up and coming madman in the country knew that the place to really make a statement was right in the heart of Manhattan. Of course, most of those jokers got their heads handed to them on silver platters, complete with a side helping of utter humiliation. But that's just the way it was. It seemed like every week, some other idiot would step forward with a new plan for world domination, starting right in downtown Manhattan. They were doomed to fail. They were the idiots. The smart ones started out someplace else and then worked their way up to Manhattan. On June 16, 1964, it stopped being a la ughing rna tter. That's the day the Devastator got into his longest battle against Superior to date. Superior was tracking down a series of mysterious bombings that eventually led him straight to the Devastator's secret hideout deep beneath the streets of the city. From there, it was only a matter of time before a fight broke out.

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Superior and the Devastator battled it out toe to toe for a good, long while, but the fight was destined to never go the distance. Superior might have had the reputation as the toughest alpha ever, but the Devastator sure gave him a run for his money. Their battle raged across the streets of New York for over an hour, and it drew in other deltas on both sides. Delta Prime warred against Dreadnaut in a fight that shook the city's very foundations. Just when it looked like Superior had his old foe on the ropes, the Devastator broke loose and zoomed back to his headquarters. When Superior caught up with him there, the son of a bitch actually triggered off a doomsday device he'd been saving for the occasion. The resulting explosion leveled over six blocks and damaged many more. Windows were reportedly shattered up to two miles away. Superior and many of his Primer buddies-along with thousands of innocents-were buried under several tons of rubble. Superior eventually managed to dig himself out of the rubble, but the Devastator's plan had worked. In all the commotion from the destruction, he had managed to get away scot free. I think that incident should have been the warning sign for the Bicentennial Battle. It put us on notice about the lengths to which a man like the Devastator was prepared to go. It wasn' t until '76 that he topped himself once and for all. Ever since the Vanishing, things in New York have gotten worse. Entire sections of the city have been destroyed in delta battles, many of which involved large numbers of Delta Primers squaring off against an alpha escaped from New Alcatraz.

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Lots of people have left the city once and for all, but New Yorkers have proven a stubborn lot. Most of them­ particularly those who've got real estate on the island or a great apartment-just refuse to go. Some congresspeople have actually suggested that Kennedy close down the entire island of Manhattan and leave it to the deltas that war across it. Up until now, he's refused to do that at every turn . To him, giving up an entire borough of the nation's largest city would be a huge step in the wrong direction, and he's not willing to do that-at least not yet. Let things go on the way they have for a bit longer though, and you never know. To counteract the number of unregistered deltas in the Big Apple­ some of which call themselves Defiants and many of which don't even bother-the President has assembled the largest domestic group of Primers ever to patrol the city's streets. The effort seems to have done little to sway the fervor with which rogue deltas plague the island. If anything, it seems to have made the situation even more desirable to the rogues, as it's given them that much more of a challenge. The results can be seen on just about every street in the heart of the city. Buildings have been knocked down or punched through. Cars have been tossed here and there like cheap, plastic toys. Chalk outlines are far too common of a site. Some people ask why Mighty Misha bombed Atlanta and San Francisco instead of a nerve center like New York City. If you're there, all you've got to do is look around to see why. We 've already taken care of that for him.

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PHILADELPHIA

The City of Brotherly Love has been a disaster area for the past 30 years, surpassing the record of the next­ highest city-New York-by five years . Today, things aren't as bad here as the y once were, but that's probably because most of the delta loons take their business up the interstate to the Big Apple instead. At one time, Philadelphia was a city of great history, mostly dedicated to the founding days of the greatest democracy on the face of the planet. These days, the democracy's not faring so well, and the city almost seems to mirror the country's ills. Most of the historic monuments have been torn to pieces in the course of delta battles raging through the city. The Liberty Bell-for instance-was used to kill the Statesman back in '84, crushing him to death. The already­ cracked bell was destroyed in the process. Its shards were recovered and mostly reassembled . If you ever make it downtown, you can still see them on display. Similarly, Independence Hall was torn to pieces in a delta battle in '92. Everybody's long since forgotten what the battle was about or even who was involved in it. It's not really all that important when stacked up against what happened. These days, downtown Philly is a ghost town. Nobody really bothers to come down here anymore. There's not much to see, and most of the businesses that used to be here have moved to safer ground . Of course, most of the delta problems left with the people. Who knows? Given a few years, the city might actually manage to bounce back.

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SAN DIEGO

With the ongoing border war that keeps flaring up between the US and Mexico, San Diego is a much more important city than you might think. Sure, it's always been a port of call, a final waystation, and a checkpoint between the two countries. It's also been a hotbed of drug smuggling for that exact same reason. That was all before Kennedy decided to put up the Wall. You've probably seen it on TV, but there's nothing like actually being there. It's literally mile after mile of guard towers, searchlights, roving teams of dogs, and rolls of concertina wire. And that's just on the edges. The Wall itself is a sheer surface that's 25 feet high. It's made of

Hamel

reinforced cement, and it's covered with razor-sharp blades all along its surface. In most places, it stands stark and clean, but in others-most notably near San Diego-it's covered almost entirely with spraypainted tags. The fact is that, no matter what the President might like you to believe, it's impossible to patrol a border as long as the one the US shares with Mexico. Still, that doesn't stop us from trying. Despite the fact that most of Mexico is now nothing more than a cheap labor camp for US businesses who aren't perturbed by sweatshop conditions for their workers, we apparently don't want any Mexicans sneaking into the country on the sly. The most shocking testimony to this is the fact that when a guard shoots down a Mexican trying to sneak into our country, no cleanup crew ever

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comes out to remove it. Instead, the corpse is left there to hang as a dire warning to any who might be thinking of following in its fa tal footsteps. You'd think this would be enough to stop the illegal immigration, but apparently the feds-and everybody else-has underestimated the tenacity of the people living in the Mexican border towns. Dozens of p opJe try ery day, and a few of them even make it. Most of th em, however, never reach the fabled land o f opportunity. All I have to say about the matter is that if the Mexicans want so badly to get up here, just imagine how awful it must be down there .

SAN fRANCISCO If you left your heart in San Francisco, you can kiss that baby good­ bye. The whole place went up in a blast of radioactive fire only about an hour after Atlanta led the way straight into hell. San Francisco was one hell of a city. Only a ways off from Berkeley, it was one of the few major cities that actually considered itself delta friendly in those days. Since then, the idea of a city even being tolerant of deltas has long ago fallen out of fashion. There are some in the Defiance who say Kennedy might have given Misha a hand in choosing his targets for the attack. After all, if he was looking to take out a city that had been a thorn in Kennedy's side for long enough, he couldn't have done much better. Of course, that's all a lot of nonsense, right? Let's hope so. One of the worst parts about the destruction of San Francisco is that the Russkies used neutron bombs. These



were supposed to take out a huge number of people with a low level of lingering radioactivity, making it safe for the city to be occupied after the people in it were dead. The casualties in San Francisco were much higher than they were in Atlanta, but the property damage was comparatively minimal. The Golden Ga te Bridge came down in the initial blast, but m ost of the rest of the city still stood tall. The rescue teams waited outside the city until they got the go-ahead from the federal nuclear disaster teams to move on in. When the relief agencies finally showed up, they found there was no one there to save . The streets and homes were literally packed with bodies, many of which were already beginning to rot. There was little to do except start carting out the corpses. The cleanup crews spent the better part of a year actually hauling dead people out of the city, and they still couldn't get them all. Eventually, they just gave up, leaving the rest of the bodies to their fate. Most of the victims were either tossed into the ocean, incinerated, or buried in a mass grave. Even now, over a decade later, it seems like you can still smell death in the air of the city. The place is still like a ghost town. Some people have moved in to take the place of the dead, but many others- either out of respect or some irrational fear-have opted to leave the place alone . These days, San Francisco is known as the Haunted City. If you're looking for a place to hide for a while and you're not afraid of possibly stumbling across some long-forgotten corpse­ which happens all the time-'Frisco might be the place for you . Otherwise, I'd give it a wide berth.

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126

H Ho llywood 152

H ong Kong 97

H ot shot 125, 132

Libya 93, 152

Light sensitive 126

Lo:; Angeles 80

Manna 121

Memorial Field 68

Mental shield 127

Mexico 104

Miami 82

Middle-East 101

M ight of God 121

Mins 24

N New York 83

N ightvision 126

No fear 128

P Phil delphia 85

Power

packages 109

Prime

Headquarters 69

R Radar 127

Ra ttle brain 126

In plai n sight 126

India 102

Iran 101

Iraq 101

Irela nd 99

Israel 102

Italy 100

I've got a plan 124

U United

N ations 107, 153

W Washington, DC 88

Wastelands 151

Wrath of God 122

Japan 103

35 PIJUCE

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Telekinesis 127

Tel kinetic 127, 136

Teleport foe 128

Telep ort friend 128

eleporta tion 128

Tcleporter 128, 137

ough 128, 138

Triumph Tower 71

Turnabout 123

CROSS POLII

WAIT, THERI'S MORf!

Come on, we weren' t going to get you all worked up about Brave New World and then just leave you hanging. If you liked this book, there's a lot more where that came from!

BRAVE NEW WORLD:

AROLEPLAYING GAME

This is the book that starts it all! You literally can' t play the game without it. This deluxe, hardcover book comes complete with all the backstory and rules you need to get your Brave New World saga rolling. If you haven't got a copy already, be sure to head down to your favorite retailer and demand yours now! Written by Matt "Brave New World" Forbeck. Cover by Zeke Sparkes. 224 pages, 64 in color! SKU# 7000 $30.00

POWER SHIELD

THE BRAVf NEW WORLD GUlDf'S SCRHN

N w that you know the game, it's time to actually play it. N o more fumbling thro ugh the book looking fo r tha t crucia l table. They're all her in an easy-t -refe rence forma t on the inside of this dazzlingly colorful, trifo1 d screen, the perf ct place to keep your secrets b hind. Power Sh ield also come with The Ripper, the firs t Brave New World adventure. It's a great launching poinL for your v ry ow n Brave New World saga. Wri tten by Shane "Dead lands" Lacy Hen -1 y. 48 pages, plus screen! SKU# 7001 $1 .DO

DUIANTS:

THE DUIANCE SOURCEBOOK

The battle for Brave New World rages n . This book dra ws back the veil f secrecy that surrounds the most powerful group of rebels in America: th e Defiance! L ern th truth about Truth an d the organ ization she's behind. Dcfiauce also comes wi th six brand-new power pack ges for use in your game. No good Defiant would be caugh t without it! Written by Matt "Brave New World " Forb ck, with a hot cover by Brian DeSpain. 128 pages, oj tcover SKU# 7003 $20.00