September 2002

Freshly promoted Lt. Frank Rodgers glanced quickly across the faces of his long-time military partners, now crammed inside the brown interior of a military transport.  He, like the others, knew that an enemy whose resources went far beyond own lay ahead of them. 

The Rikti had already taken the lives of many super-heroes.  That thought troubled Frank and his group the most. The military’s inability to find out the nature or exact magnitude of the losses made it worse.  In desperation, the city had already issued a call to all forces to defend against the alien invaders.  All apprehension aside, Frank Rodgers - and his friends were all too dedicated, and perhaps too stubborn, to ignore that call, despite what looked like an inevitable outcome.

“All right, comrades! Let’s move out!” 

The soldiers’ boots plunged into the mud as the rickety, loud truck sped off behind them.  With Frank leading by a few paces, they jogged slowly through the twisted metal and unrecognizable carnage. Their gray suits blended into the constant smoke that filled Paragon City.  One man stopped as he looked, awestruck, at a building that had once towered high above the others, now sliced in half in almost cartoon-like fashion.  Another solider tapped him on the helmet, urging him to catch up. 

As they jogged, Frank reflected on his life, now so seemingly miniscule and short, and lamented his journey through the ranks of military.  Now it seemed just a waste of precious time, a thought directly opposite every other thought and action he'd used to guide his life before.  A sound interrupted his conflicts. 

“Hostile…” Frank half-whispered with fear. 

Breaking through the fog was a long, linear green light, high in the sky. 

Clearing his throat, Frank shouted this time. “Hostile spotted!” 

The others mumbled a mixture of prayers, curses, and other thoughts, all of which stopped abruptly as they neared the light and found more chaos and death.   Beneath the rubble lay a nearly unrecognizable human.  He was barely covered with shredded strips of a hero’s attire.  They turned from the dead hero back toward the light, now recognizable as coming from an incredibly large spacecraft.  It panned from point to point, illuminating the carnage. 

“What the hell…” muttered one of the gray-haired soldiers as he watched a compact group of Rikti monkeys trample an innocent man, forcing him to the ground. 

A cosmic ray exploded barely fifty yards in front Frank’s group, close enough to scatter the frightened soldiers. Frank crouched down instinctively and screamed over his shoulder, “Stay close, men!  Stay close, for God’s sake!” As he looked over his shoulder, he saw a group of Rikti teleport between him and his scattered allies. 

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Conscripts, guided by a Headman Gunner, spread in all directions toward his men.  Frank, speechless, clenched his rifle tightly, peppering the enemy with wild fire as his eyes widened in fear.  Running for cover amidst some ruins, he watched helplessly as a Rikti minion sliced unforgivingly through the torso of one of the soldiers, leaving the body sprawled insignificantly among the other fallen.  As he peered through tears around the building, he witnessed the Headman Rikti Gunner, in sleek black armor, blast a greenish-gray cosmic ray into the back of one his men. He quickly dropped back around, sinking into a sitting position against the wall fragment, closing his eyes tightly and banging the back of his head into it.  After what seemed an eternity, he clicked on his radio as he began to come out of his cover. “Lt. Frank Rodgers reporting. Come in, Delta-Four…” he muttered, voice shaking.

The radio continued to whisper only static as Frank peered deeply into the combat scene.  Heroes raced through the skies with the rays of plasma cannons chasing them.  He looked desperately for his comrades; the thought of being alone, for the first time, wwracked Frank with a wave of fear.  He ran through the wreckage as a Rikti elite, only feet away, slaughtered a hero who was relentlessly swinging his stone mallet at the foe.  All around him heroes were being put to their death.  Frank thought it was only a matter of small time before he'd become part of the massive death toll. 

Frank halted abruptly as a purple ray sped by his head, missing him by just inches, leaving him with an incredible headache for a split second until it passed.  He looked around swiftly and then, out of instinct, down. A Rikti monkey jumped dumbfounded around his feet.  Frank took two slow steps back as he fired his rifle at the creature.  It sank motionlessly in front of him.  Franks legs seemed to move him forward toward a group of heroes huddled on top of a building.

“Lieutenant!  Frank!  Frank!”

The sounds of Rikti warfare kept Frank from hearing the precise direction from which the sound had come.  He whirled around in circles, looking through the devastation, until he saw a familiar, gray-suited, soldier laying limp in a shallow crater.  Despite the acid burning inside his legs, Frank ran and dropped down next to his fallen friend.  The soldier’s legs were unrealistically twisted and his face was disoriented.

“Can you hear me, comrade?” Frank asked, his voice still shaky.

“The others, lieutenant, they’re all dead…they’re…dead.” The soldier’s lips quivered with pain and fear. 

Frank removed his helmet.  “Stay here. I’m going to contact Delta. They can get us out of here. They can bring us something… they can bring us somewhere… Hang in there, pal.”  He keyed his radio. “Delta-Four! For god’s sake… Delta-Four!”  Frank screamed again into the obsolete, static-filled radio.

The two soldiers looked at each other as if forced to acknowledge their fate.

“I’m sorry…” Frank paused for a moment before finishing, “…friend.” 

Before either of them could say more, a spawned mere feet in front of the two survivors.  Frank frantically tried to pick up his fallen ally, but his fatigued body wouldn't let him budge the soldier. The Rikti poured out of the humming vortex, drowning the sound with cries in their alien language. As Rikti energy blasts washed over their bodies, Frank tried to scale the small crater, but he lacked the strength to move forward.  He fell to his back, watching in anger and fear as his friend faded into death.  Through his dimming vision he saw a few heroes rush toward the portal.  A hero stomped the ground with a massive steel boot—sending a shockwave through the ground—knocking the Rikti along with his comrade's lifeless body away from the crater.  As his vision dimmed into deep, solid black, Frank’s pervasive fear finally began to began to fade. 

“Move!” … “Let’s go!” … “He’s breathing!” … “Roger’ that!”

Frank could barely open his eyes.  Compared to his last memories, he felt tranquil.  Men, humans, in sleek armor-braced banded, grabbed his feet.  They didn't look at his face, but routinely, nearly mechanically, handled his body.  He glanced over one their shoulders; he could see a jet on tarmac, still emitting smoke as if it just landed.  The words “Project X” were stencilled across the side of the jet in small print.  He noticed a familiar military emblem on the sleeve of one of the men.  But, it was all too much for him, and Frank Rodgers closed his eyes, surrendered again into the blackness.

Two months later…

“Excellent,” a middle-aged man in a white lab-coat casually noted as he scribbled into a thick journal labeled “21-X.”  Frank Rodgers opened his eyes wide for the first time in weeks as he watched the other man’s eyes widen even more, his pen falling from his hand in shock.

“We have full-recovery!  I need a medic immediately!” the man squeaked with excitement.

Frank tried to sit up but was held fast by metal bands around his torso, arms, and legs.  “Wha…?” Frank began to speak, but he stopped in mid-phrase; his body felt so different.  Even when he tried to speak, his voice felt rejuvenated.  He looked around the busy room at others wearing the same white lab-coats.  A man in a green, surgical attire pushed through them and hurried to Frank's side.  He quickly grabbed Frank’s wrist and straightened his arm, then forced a syringe into Frank’s forearm.  Frank cursed quietly but then became instantly silent as he watched the small hole in his arm smooth out as it was before. 

“Can you hear me, Lt. Rodgers?” the man in green asked.

“I can.” Frank said, still looking at his surroundings.

The surgeon left Frank and hurried into a room encased by huge glass windows and filled with panels of buttons and computer screens.  Men in formal military attire, the man in the lab-coat, and all the others in the room stopped their work to look at Frank.

“Success. Regeneration rate upped by over 300 percent.” Frank overheard the scientist saying as they looked onto a small monitor on the control panel.

“Initiate the UCM sequence,” ordered one of the men in the formal military dress.

“Ultimate Combat Mechanism uploading… in progress…” the scientist replied, as he typed on the control panel.

Suddenly, the bands around Frank’s arms tightened even more.  On each side of the table were box-shaped machines that opened to the inside, toward Frank.  Something inside them began revving up, and a  neon light shone from the inside. Two large, silver robotic gloves emerged from the boxes openings, inching closer to Frank’s fastened hands. They slid over his hands and onto his fingers.  Their metallic uppers completely covered his forearms as well.  Lined with a soft leather, they locked tightly over his arms as the machine stopped revving. A brief moment of silence filled the room.

All of the people in the room gazed at him simultaneously as Frank looked back at them confused.  He would soon be aware of everything.

Moments later, Frank found himself seated on a table in a new room surrounded with wires and screens.  His arms were free of the robotic gloves.

“Project 21-X, Mr. Rodgers…” said a military General matter-of-factly as he paced around the room.  Frank recognized him as the one from the control room.

“…Have you ever heard of it?”

“No. I don’t know what the hell is going on, sir. The last thing I remember is shaking hands with death and now I realize, apparently, that memory is slightly askew.”

“Actually, lieutenant, your memory serves you just fine.  You were, like so many, near-death at the hands of the Rikti invaders.”

The mention of the aliens sent a chill down Frank's spine.

“…but unlike so many,” the general continued, “we were able to rescue you.  Now...you may remember signing up for numerous tests at the time of your promotion.”

“You mean like Scout-Field Simulation?” Frank interrupted.

“No, I don’t, Mr. Rodgers.  I'm talking about the Project X series. We like to refer to it as 'The Scarlet Justice.'”

Frank scanned his own shirtless body as the general spoke, only then realizing that it wasfree of any scars or flaws, even old ones.

“…Project X testing was unconventional to most military action.  The few soldiers who underwent these projects before you were all killed because of scientific miscalculation and overestimation.”

Franks watched the General continued pacing around the room, going through his speech as if it were a memorized monologue.

“Of course, the Board of Advisors was outraged by the attempts to continue with such activities.  On paper it had seemed nice, you know?  But, when the lives of soldiers were lost at our hands, and not a foreign enemy’s, it the started getting a conscience.”

The General shifted his focus to Frank, who was desperately trying to get a step ahead of the conversation. “Inevitably the Project X series was shut down, with only one improbable chance for reopening."  The General paused and then began reciting as if from memory.  ‘In the event a war in which our military forces facing inevitable defeat, Project X may be reopened only inasmuch as its goal is the revival and recuperation of a soldier or soldiers to his or her original state of combat or better.’  They had not banked on the Rikti.”  The General looked away from Frank as if giving hima few moments cheap mental privacy to absorb what he'd said. Frank took a deep breath.  He needed no further explanation. “What does this mean for me?”

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Frank nodded.

“You have become something far greater than we can oversee or control, Mr. Rodgers.  You will soon be among them… if you chose to be.”

The general smiled slightly as Frank ran his fingers backd through his unkempt blonde hair and down over his neck.  He sighed to himself deeply, knowing full well that, despite the General's words, they would make every effort to "oversee and control."

“Will you fight as a hero, sir?” the General asked,

Their efforts be damned, he would serve his country and Paragon Citydespite them.  “Yes... As I once did before.”

The general nodded at Frank and extended his hand.  Frank shook it, though he had little doubt the General knew exactly what he was thinking.

“Thank you, Mr. Rodgers. Project...The Scarlet Justice is now two-thirds complete.”

“The Scarlet Justice…” Frank repeated to himself.

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