2851 AD. Planet Earth, Sol System.
Thunder crashed over the dark and desolate wasteland that was once one of Earth's most striking cities. Dark alleyways intersected the abandoned roads as crumbling buildings, haunted by neglect and abandonment rose high in to the eerie night sky. They stood as shadows of their once proud stature, representations that seemed no more than specters of a once sprawling opulence.
The stale night air was filled with the unmistakable stench of human waste, rotting bodies and various other smells that had mixed into a fetid aroma.
Irregularly placed streetlights burned on low, glowing a pale yellow light into the dark streets. Almost all of them were weary from lack of maintenance as they flickered on and off, adding to the already ghostly landscape.
Every once in a while an individual would scurry about, ambling the dark alleyways, careful to avoid the light. There were things and individuals far more fearsome than the dark. But such was life in Sector 9 of The Inferno.
Its dark streets held secrets of unknown depths, but humans being humans had adapted. Its inhabitants came to The Inferno by various means, more often than not; they didn't come of their own free will.
Those who could remember the outside world lived a more oppressive sort of hell, for they had once seen the pleasure to be had outside The Inferno.
But one thing was clear to all, no body escaped The Inferno.
Manmade monsters lingered in dark corners, forever on the watch, looking for prey. Diseased body's lay wherever they had taken their last breath. Even among the living disease ran rampant, food was scarce and in the concrete jungle many called home, only the strong survived.
The dark clouds hovered like a bad omen as six fully armed individuals casually walked across a road towards a crumbling down building. Only three of the four original walls now stood.
The façade of the building was a glass curtain type entrance that extended from the ground floor. It stood twenty or so feet before, breaking off in a haphazard manner that showed the building must have toppled sideways.
The materials of the building showed wear and tear, it was a miracle it still stood after so long. There were many indicators that the construction had most likely been an early twenty first century urban dwelling. The most obvious thing being the steel skeleton frame, which was now an obsolete form of construction.
The fourth floor's three walls didn't even reach their full height and showed the construction had toppled sideways, the other twenty or so stories that would have stood now lay in ruins on top of other neighboring buildings.
Jagged broken glass littered the entrance, but the glass wall was mainly still intact. Its door was nowhere in sight, and beyond the threshold was nothing but an unnatural gloom.
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Maxwell Camden stood to one side of the threshold that led into the antique dwelling; weapon gripped in his Exo clad hands and silently told his Embedded Suit Computer to switch to night vision.
He lifted his head and looked behind him; he could see his team in the cloud covered gloom. Behind him stood two Exo clad agents, he couldn't tell who was who but that didn't bother him.
On his other side stood another three agents.
He lifted his hand and gestured for the agent in front of him to go ahead. The agent held a plasma flash grenade, and with a flick of his wrist the ball flew right into the gloom and disappeared. A beat passed, before an unnatural white light exploded in to the room.
Max wasted no time as he jumped into the light, keeping his finger ready on the trigger as he powered his way into the blinding light.
His visor quickly adjusted to the extreme light as he swiveled his head left, right, keeping his assault rifle trained in front of him he continued into the light, confident his team would follow him in. Seeing no immediate threats, he lowered his plasma rifle and turned around to face his team.
The light of the flash grenade slowly dwindled to a working level. Max looked around his environment, ugly, old, decrepit but antique. They were in some sort of lobby, the area was large-the next level a good fifteen feet above them. The winding stairs standing to each side were a testament to its twenty first century architecture.
Thanks to the flash grenade, the lobby was no longer covered in an impenetrable layer of darkness, and he could see the large slabs of concrete that had fallen from the upper floor and lay in a haphazard manner. The room was covered in wooden tables, chairs and all sorts of furniture.
Although his team was protected in their Powered Exoskeleton Combat Suits, to Max the jumble of stone they had entered felt alive. The environment was harsh and he felt as though he could almost feel the heavy concentrated air bearing down upon him.
Consequently he knew his agents in their Exo's couldn't really complain, because they obviously had advantages over the natives. For one thing he was sure that breathing would be damn near impossible. The dense air in front him danced with large dust particles that most likely would cause long term damage to those who breathed it in.
The heat mixed with the putrid humid air to produce a tense calm, the overhead clouds covered everything like a dense blanket that weighed down on the mood like a ton of moon rocks.
Coming out of his musings he looked back at his team and held his hand up.
"Enter Intuitive Network."
The I.N. in Max's opinion was quite useful, having been developed only five years earlier, it worked quite simply by linking a soldier's system into a network with the other soldiers in his unit; these units were, in turn, networked to each other and up the chain of command.
In his helmet, his HUD brought up a list of some of the features that had previously been off for power preservation as they come online.
Maxwell sometimes wondered why he was given command of the STRK Team Prodigy, he still felt that they needed more training.
Max's STRK Agents were still fairly new to the whole concept of covert and military operations given to a semi-civilian force. But becoming Strikers took hard work, brains, and guts and his Strikers certainly had all those traits in abundance.
All his team members were just what their name stated; prodigy's in their own field, but he still had misgivings about some other factors that his commanders most likely wouldn't have taken into account.
He shook his head and smiled inwardly, they were a great lot and they would do just great on this, their first mission, after 12 training ops on different planets, colonies and satellites.
Due to the I.N. when he looked at one of the agents he 'intuitively' knew that in the Steel Battalion X-09 Mark VII combat armor was the blocky faced pilot Damien Grey, the gentle giant who could fly any space vessel.
Next to him stood the smaller, but just as competent, scout and stealth expert Alvin Zillion, who had on BioCorp Elite Legion III armor.
Close to the stairs stood their three female members, their medic Kelly Jacobson, the electronic engineer Delaney Smith and the rookie Veronica Felton who specialized in everything foreign and was their diplomat.
The three females, along with Max himself, all wore the prototype Vulcan Space Centurion IV combat armor.
Their other skills notwithstanding, they could all handle all sorts of rifles and were all versed in all types of combat skills and were all avid tacticians. And after 12 training ops S.T.R.K Team Prodigy was a go. Except for Veronica all his agents had some sort of experience with combat, all in all the entire outlook for the first mission was good.
Max opened the communications on the I.N. to his team's links. "Listen up."
The agents shifted slightly to acknowledge that they were listening but continued to hold their positions.
