Chapter 70: Recruit and Survivor

Barry Pent was a Generation IV recruit.

When agents of Section X came to his doorsteps, Barry and his parents were hesitant about the deal they brought to the table. Like many parents, Barry's mother and father were completely against the idea of sending their son to a different world to fight against bloodthirsty Mutants and cutthroat survivors.

But Barry's family was in the lower class. They lived in a questionable neighborhood in Chicago, where shooting and looting has grown to be an everyday phenomenon. If he was left to walk his own path, Barry would either end up in one gang or another, or he would hold a poorly paid job that offered little compensation and next to no stability.

He would be just another of millions and millions of people who were at the bottom of the food pyramid in the United States.

If he was to join the Phasewalker Program, on the other hand, he would become one of thousands of unique individuals not just in the country, but in the world. His potentials were limitless.

So Barry took the contract and signed his name.

Immediately, Barry's parents were moved to one of the safer neighborhoods in the city. The initial bonus Barry received were more than enough for the down payment of the house, and Section X offered a 0 percent interest mortgage to Barry's parents that would persist as long as Barry remained true to the Phasewalker cause.

At that point, even if Barry had doubts, it would be too late.

After several weeks of training, Barry, along with two thousand of his Generation IV Phasewalker comrades, were shipped to World Alpha. Barry actually did decently in training, so he was placed into the 2nd Airborne Battalion, under Major Riley.

Honestly, Barry didn't know if he should be happy about this designation. The 2nd Airborne paid really well and being an Airborne Trooper was like a badge of honor, but joining the battalion was also a death sentence. Two of its commanding officers have died, for god's sake! Last time, half the battalion was wiped out on a raiding mission! But Barry knew he had no real option. His chance to say no disappeared a long, long time ago.

Before the Battle of New Sara, Barry was scared to the death. Thankfully, the Commissars paid a lot of attention to these new recruits. One of the Lieutenant Commissars talked to Barry for a long time. He told Barry how so many in the world lived and died as nobodies. They lived, and they died. That was all that could be said about them. They left no impact in the world. They were, ultimately, useless.

But the Phasewalkers had a chance to make a difference. They had a chance to truly change the world around them. What they were doing here was for the good of humanity. Even if anyone fell, they would fall as martyrs, their names forever engraved into the Hall of Martyrs and remembered by all that would come after.

Death was not to be feared. Failing in his duty, on the other hand, was a much worse fate.

The Battle of New Sara was a brutal conflict, especially for the Airborne Troopers. The Arbiter X were frequently gone after by all sorts of Mutated Birds. In many cases, Airborne Troopers had to operate without the support of fellow comrades. They didn't have the heavy tanks of the 1st Armored, nor the skills of the Stasis Troopers. They could only purge their way through hordes of Mutated Animals with the Gauss Rifles in their hands, their gunships in the air, and their brothers and sisters by their side.

Many of Barry's fellow recruits were killed in the countless skirmishes, but Barry was lucky enough to survive through everything. When all the fighting was over and the Generation IV Phasewalker found himself standing over a sea of corpses, he suddenly felt like everything was well worth it.

Because in the end, the Phasewalkers have won. That was all that mattered.

In the Battle of Camp York, Barry and his squad were sent after one of the ranking York military officers. The Arbiter X laid waste to the man's entire mansion. As the Airborne Troopers swept through the battlefield, they realized there was a bomb shelter in the house that survived the blast.

The shelter's door was pushed open, and the York officer stumbled out into the open. As soon as he saw the Phasewalkers, he went down on his knees and begged for their mercy. Barry could see his wife and children were behind him. A boy and a girl, no more than 10 years old. Their mother struggled to put them behind her, shielding them from the Phasewalker rifle muzzles.

Barry and many Airborne Troopers turned to their squad leader, waiting for an instruction.

And then the instruction came in the form of a simple reminder.

"We have orders to kill."

So Barry pulled the trigger and watched as the defenseless people in front of him fell to their death. Everyone did. Did they have doubts? Of course. But they were Phasewalkers troopers.

Troopers weren't trained to think about orders, only to execute them.

Barry Anderson is a Generation IV Airborne Trooper.

Charlie Lance was a Rebirth survivor.

Twenty two years old, Charlie has always been an athlete. In university, she was on multiple sports teams. Many men have arm wrestled with her and lost. After the apocalypse erupted, she was one of the lucky ones. She was back home when all this happened. While many lost their whole family to the Alpha Virus or the Mutated Animals, Charlie managed to escort her parents and her sister and escape out of the city, slaying two Tier 0 Mutated Animals on the way with a sledgehammer. After a while, they found themselves at Camp Rebirth.

It wasn't even called that name yet, and Ford wasn't even the leader then. But the core principle remained. There, Mutants and non-Mutants worked together and forged a settlement among the Mutant-infested wild.

When the original leader of the camp passed away and Ford rose to power, Charlie couldn't care less. If anything, she was just glad everyone she cared about were still miraculously alive. Every night, whenever she would go back to her shelter and find her parents sitting around the table, waiting for her, she would pray to God for his mercy.

Even as countless around her lost their families, Charlie alone believed it was the work of God that favored her and her parents.

As a member of the military wing of the camp, Charlie's work was dangerous. Every few weeks, a squad of patrols or a group of perimeter guards would disappear, devoured by whatever beasts that lurked in the shadows. But Charlie tended to her duty with optimism in her eyes. After all, every danger she was facing was for the survival of her parents and her sister. For them, she was willing to give her life.

But while the reach of Mutants was kept out of Camp Rebirth, another, more invisible enemy seemed to have free reign over the settlement. One day, Charlie went home and was horrified to realize her aging father had caught a cold.

This time, God didn't bless her anymore.

Charlie did everything she could, but Rebirth was built in the wild with no pharmacies or medical equipment nearby. When the apocalypse happened and all hell went through, no one's first instinct was to grab some medication. Disease felt like a joke when foul Mutants were massacring everyone. But here, in Rebirth, a small fever was as deadly as a Mutated Animal.

The few doctors in the camp said there was nothing they could do.

Charlie's father passed away. Before she could mourn, her mother and her sister caught the cold as well. Charlie prayed to God more times than she could count, but this time, God seemed to be powerless to help her.

What hordes of Mutated Animals couldn't do, a puny disease seemed to be achieving with ease.

Trouble never came alone. Just as Charlie was worried about saving her family, another danger approached. The Mutated Ants. Thousands upon thousands of Warrior Ants converged upon Camp Rebirth. Blood and flesh was what they were after.

Charlie placed her sickly mother and sister in a shelter in the middle of the camp, where most of the non-combatants went. And then, just like countless of her fellow survivors, she grabbed onto a Defender-I Gauss Rifle and joined in the fight against the Mutated Ants.

For a moment, the Rebirth survivors fought with everything they had. After all, this was their last stand. There was no surrender. No escape. But soon, courage broke, and the lines crumbled. Machine gun positions and bunkers were overrun. Superhuman Mutants tasked with breaking out of the siege and seeking help were devoured by the filthy monsters. Common survivors cloaked the ground with their blood and bodies.

For a moment, Charlie thought it was all over. After everything, God has turned away from her and left her to die.

But when God didn't lend a helping hand, humanity did.

It was a man beside Charlie that first saw it. A distance away, on the horizon, a fleet of choppers approached. Before long, many of the helicopters were on the ground, unloading squads and squads of uniformed soldiers that joined in the resistance against the Mutated Ants.

Charlie didn't know who these soldiers were, but it didn't stop her from fighting side by side with them. Together, they held the Mutated Ants at bay, not giving a single inch of ground until the Ants had paid the price in blood and corpses.

To her excitement, many of these armored soldiers were helping the non-combatants in the back get into their transport aircrafts. She saw with her own eyes that her mother and sister were taken to safety.

As the Phasewalkers started ferrying people away, Charlie managed to get onto one of the shuttles. When she was taken to the staging ground, she was thrilled to find her mother and sister there, nice and alive.

The Phasewalkers took everyone back to Fortress Alpha. On the way, Charlie's mother was coughing a lot, and many Rebirth survivors quietly stepped away from her for fear of being infected. Just as Charlie was in distress, a medic suddenly walked up to her. The medic's face shield was lifted, revealing a soft, feminine face.

"Your mom's sick? Cold?"

"Yeah..." Charlie was almost afraid of what the soldier might do. She has seen too many cases of those in positions of power abandoning the old and the sickly that served no further purpose. "She'll be fine…"

"Here," Instead of forcing the old woman to be abandoned, the medic guided the three to a Leopard APC. A few Assault Troopers jumped down and started walking, making room for the family of three.

The medic got on as well. She handed a bottle of clean water and a pill to Charlie's mother and sister. "Here. Take it."

Charlie's mother and sister had the pills. Soon, their coughing significantly decreased.

For a moment, in the armor covered interior of the Leopard APC, Charlie was satisfied.

After the survivors from Rebirth got back to Fortress Alpha, the Phasewalkers gave them food and tents and blankets and water and anything else they might need to survive. The selfless help from the Phasewalkers helped many survivors get over the pain of losing their home and their families. When news got out that these survivors were to be ordered into two Rebirth Support Battalions, no one questioned it.

It wasn't as if they had anywhere to go back to.

Charlie, in particular, was really grateful to repay the faction that saved the lives for her, her mother, and her sister. She wasn't a fool either. Leave Fortress Alpha and she would probably be dead in a day. Stay here, and she and her family could not only live, but also live somewhat comfortably.

The choice was obvious.

What Ford did disappointed her. The recording. The confessions. There were more than enough evidence to prove that it was the former leader of Rebirth who was at fault. The Phasewalkers saved him and gave him a choice. He answered their kindness by trying to usurp their settlement.

Rumors said Ford was still alive, only to be imprisoned and tortured by Fortress Alpha. Charlie didn't care. That was what traitors deserve.

After that, Charlie was assigned to the 1st Rebirth Battalion. She took part in the Battle of New Sara and the Battle of Camp York. In the Battle of New Sara, after the Phasewalkers did the initial sweep and cleared up most of the resistance, the 1st Rebirth Support Battalion worked with the Alpha Support Battalions to enter every street and every building and every house and purge the few Mutated Animals that weren't lured into the open by human sound and smell. Many fell beside Charlie, but the female Rebirth Trooper pushed on without hesitation.

For those that saved her family, she was willing to offer her soul.

Charlie Lance is a Rebirth Trooper of the 1st Rebirth Support Battalion.