The Dark Zones

-One Year Post Saturation Completion. CONT,-

The pulse wave of Alpha Particles acted similarly to an Electro-Magnetic Pulse, or EMP for short, frying every satellite in low orbit and even the technology we had as far out as the Moon, effectively limiting our observation methods. 

Still, that doesn't exclude other forms of communication, such as cell phones or even the internet. How is it that in this modern age, billions of people would suddenly be unreachable?

We had no idea; that's why I said they went dark. It was as if all technology suddenly stopped working, and those people vanished. It would be months before answers were finally obtained. 

Moving along, all over the world, powerful Alpha Rankers cropped up and rose to power… bringing not only stability but also danger. 

However, there was a singular similarity between every single one of them, and that was the fact that they all had, at the minimum, Zeta Ranked Talents. 

By July of 2029, the majority of the large Organizations that would rise to power had finished doing so. Their first order of business, no matter what country they represented, was to expand their numbers and bring order to their country. 

In the United States, things were no different. The Heroes Association's numbers grew swiftly in the beginning, and in turn, order was maintained within weeks. 

New legislation was drawn up and introduced, and a regulatory body meant to organize and, more importantly, control the American Citizens came to be. 

At first, the only requirement to join USA-HA was to become an Alpha Ranker. Upon getting "Accepted" into the Association, all new members were required to enter a one-month Training program, wherein they would officially obtain the Title of "Hero" and be allowed to make their own "Hero Name."

Since it was something new and those in power had earned themselves a good reputation, the USA-HA was inundated with applications, causing their numbers to swell past the one million mark onward until a solid 20% of the American people were registered heroes. 

Once you received a hero's license, you were then sent out to a predetermined city and given a general location or 'Sector' that you were meant to patrol. 

Basically, all the USA-HA did was create a bunch of superpowered Cops. Still, it was more than enough to keep things from going out of control. 

But just like in fiction, with heroes comes the dark side of things, in this case, villains. With Arkadia and Instances being available to everyone on Earth, that meant that those with evil personalities or thoughts could also have a chance at obtaining power. 

So alongside the rise of the USA-HA came what was labeled as a Shadow Organization, well not just one but thousands.

When you were someone who was inherently selfish and greedy and didn't play well with others, there was no doubt going to be friction; thus, Shadow Orgs came and went like a summer storm in Florida. 

They were a dime a dozen, and usually, most Shadow Orgs were sniffed out by the heroes and mercilessly crushed like a roach under a boot. 

However, in the off chances that a villain DID survive encountering a hero, because don't get it f***ed up and think the Heroes didn't kill, they for sure did; it was generally only because their crimes weren't viewed as carrying a death sentence.

As I said before, Heroes were effectively Cops with superpowers; they had the legal right to take lives if they deemed it necessary, and it happened…frequently. 

Sure, there were rules in place to prevent killing innocent people, and there was even plenty of red tape involved when it came to eliminating a villain. However, there were still significantly more Villains killed than thrown into special prisons. 

Near the end of August, tragedy struck the United States…a Shadow Org by the name of Flowing Corruption enacted a terror plot that ended up nearly destroying Los Angeles; although the final death toll was never verified, news outlets claimed the Shadow Org ended up killing around 300 thousand people before the USA-HA finally put a stop to them.

The LA Incident, as it was later named, wouldn't be the last time mass murders would occur, especially after a group of crazies on the internet leaked how much potential XP was earned by Flowing Corruption. 

That fact alone drove the media back into a frenzy, to the point that the USA-HA was forced to make a public statement on the topic, which amounted to, "We will do what we can, but who told you to be so weak as to die easily."

November 19th, 2029, was a pretty important day for my family because, after 11 months of being in a coma, it was the day my Father finally woke up. When he did, the first thing he did was take a shower, only to realize he no longer looked or felt his age, but instead, he had somehow become 20 years younger. 

Everyone in the family was beyond excited, and soon enough, my elderly Father was brought up to speed about the new and previous science fiction changes our world had undergone. 

This brings us to Christmas Day, December 25th, 2029

For nearly a year, recon teams had been entering the lands known as 'Dark Zones' only to lose contact with their handlers or organizations after a certain point.

The world's organizations had tried everything they could think of; no matter which approaches they tried, by land, air, or sea, the results were always the same: loss of contact and total annihilation. 

Sometimes, the wreckages would be located drifting out in the open ocean, but it wasn't until Christmas day that the first bit of footage from Central America went public. 

North of the capital of Mexico, *Mexico City* is a city named Zacatecas, located roughly in the center of the country. This was the absolute furthest people had been able to reach, and on the livestream, the reason was evident. 

Where once deserts spanned far and wide, a massive, and when I say massive, I mean ABSOLUTELY COLOSSAL Forest had magically appeared.