A multinational biotech conglomerate initiates development of a viral medical platform intended to eliminate disease, halt cellular degradation, and override traumatic death. The Animaphage is engineered to reinforce tissue, preserve organ function, and biologically synchronize hosts—marketed internally as a path toward functional immortality for elite populations.
Early trials demonstrate extraordinary resilience but reveal catastrophic side effects: heightened aggression, loss of emotional regulation, neural collapse under stress, and uncontrolled mutation. Despite warnings, development continues under classified emergency authorization.
Ethics divisions are dissolved. Human trials expand inside sealed medical complexes across multiple countries. Side effects are reclassified as “behavioral instability.” Containment protocols are quietly relaxed to accelerate results. Several regional breaches occur and are suppressed without public knowledge.
A cascading containment failure—whether accident or sabotage remains unknown—releases infected subjects across multiple urban centers worldwide. Hospitals misdiagnose early cases. Emergency wards become amplification points. Within months, Animaphage infection spreads across continents.
Governments collapse in waves. Militaries attempt quarantines that fail block by block. Evacuations turn into mass conversion events. Cities fall not in explosions, but in screaming cascades of Fresh infected.
Nations go dark. Borders cease to matter. Humanity fractures into fortified remnants.
New Hope City is one of thousands—but it survives long enough to matter.
Across the world, survivors learn the same lessons independently:
• Silence is survival
• Fire attracts death
• Fortification delays but does not save
• Vertical space equals life
The first heavily fortified safe zones rise—concrete, steel, sound-dampened—but many collapse within months. Early infected variants stabilize. Shamblers fill streets. Skitters claim interiors.
The Outriders form during this period, an international order dedicated solely to eradication. Hope briefly returns.
As survival becomes routine, organization replaces panic.
The Mercenary Contract Board (MCB) is founded within the first five years, operating out of neutral bars and clubs across ruined cities worldwide. Its purpose is simple: regulate hired violence. Rank mercenaries. Assign contracts to those capable of surviving them. The MCB does not care who wins—only that jobs are completed.
At the same time, New Hope City sees the birth of its major factions.
Power consolidates locally.
• Shard Coalition stabilizes the Shatterreach
• Iron Dogs dominate through shock raids
• Gutter Saints transition from shelters into slavers
• Neon Knives claim vertical movement
• Breakwater Confederacy secures the bay
• Ledger Syndicate organizes the Exchange interiors
• Streetweight Collective controls the open streets
• Cinder Faith occupies the Ashworks
• Keepers of Haven quietly claim Greenhaven
• The Bastion formalizes under the Reclaimers
Safe zones become fewer, stronger, and quieter.
Iron Dogs and Streetweight clash over southern transit corridors. Vehicles burn for weeks. The conflict ends only when the Ledger Syndicate cuts storage and power access to both sides, forcing a ceasefire. Territory lines harden permanently.
The Cinder Faith launches a massive burn campaign, erasing multiple Shatterreach enclaves. Retaliation fails as fire redirects hordes. Entire sectors become permanent dead zones.
A coordinated uprising against the Gutter Saints erupts. Neon Knives assassinate multiple Confessors during the chaos. The revolt fails. In response, the Saints institutionalize psychological and physical breaking before indoctrination. Human trafficking expands afterward.
Last Light—one of the largest, most fortified safe zones ever built—comes under assault by the greatest horde recorded. Over three hundred Outriders respond.
For seven days they hold layered defenses, kill corridors, and collapse routes. On the eighth day, Brutes breach inner walls. Sirens trigger city-wide convergence.
Last Light falls.
Only thirty-eight Outriders survive.
Global belief in eradication dies here.
The Outriders fragment into independent kill-cells. Recruitment slows. Armor, weapons, and names are inherited. The MCB becomes the primary organizer of violence outside major factions.
Safe zones adopt Bastion-style overengineering or vanish entirely.
A Matron annihilates multiple fortified enclaves. Bastion doctrine shifts to permanent dead-zone designation. Entire districts are erased from maps.
Tyrant-class infected are confirmed. Engagement protocols mandate total evacuation. Zones fall silent permanently. Rumors spread of deliberate horde guidance.
Unexplained horde redirections, sabotaged defenses, and convergences hint at covert manipulation. A secret cult—later whispered as The Aggregate—is suspected but never proven to be engineering convergence events.
The world is not rebuilding.
It is enduring.
Safe zones are rare, fortified, and temporary.
Routes shift weekly.
Factions are entrenched.
The Animaphage continues to mutate.
The Bastion watches.
The Outriders persist.
The MCB profits.
The Aggregate prepares.
The dead did not end the world.
They changed it.