PROLOGUE

So its my intro into the story, getting everything set up with subtle clues and things for you guys to speculate on, hope you enjoy. I created the OCs and SEGA owns Sonic and his team.

It was a dark windy night. The sidewalk had an icy sheen that reflected the city lights and holiday decorations. The streets were calm and quiet as the bustling day to day festivities of the city had died down and, save for the occasional car noise in the distance, no one was around to observe this particular nights activities. The old, out of maintenance street lights and the moon did little to illuminate this underdeveloped part of the city as a mid-sized electric armored van crept its way down the block making only a silent electric hum to mark its passing.

Inside the van the interior was dimly bathed in a red light, and seven men were seated in the back, four on the right, three on the left. They sat on two long metal benches that ran the length of the vans cargo area, their backs to the armor-reinforced walls. Between each of them were wall mounted racks, each carrying equipment assigned to each member of the team, including special helmets with a inbuilt HUD (heads up display), shorter compact guns varying from sub machine guns to bullpup style assault rifles, depending on the team members preference, grenades, belts with gun magazines, and some armor plating yet to be strapped onto the wearers black jumpsuit.

"Approaching the site of the EMP, gear up." The driver stated, turning to look back at the men. "Remember, in and out. Seek and destroy, leave no one alive, and no machinery intact."

"Yes sir." The team responded in unison, starting to slot in their body armor, load their guns, secure grenades and ammo belts, and slide on their helmets, double checking and syncing their HUDs with each other, getting full team vitals and read outs on their visors.

"Sound off!" The team captain stated, and one by one the seven responded, ending with the captain.

"Romeo!"

"Oscar!"

"Lima!"

"Mike!"

"Victor!"

"Echo!"

"Zulu!" He finished. He glanced up at the driver with an eerie stare that was emotionless, yet deadly serious. "We are ready to go sir."

The driver nodded, slowing to a stop about a block away from the building. He flicked a switch and the back door slid open. Silently and swiftly, with an almost mechanized precision, the team shouldered their guns and filed out of the van, barely making a sound as they melted into the shadows and moved down the street towards the building in question.

"Damn those guys are creepy." The passenger piped up, shivering slightly as he tried to catch a glimpse of the team.

"Forget about them." The driver grimly stated. "We've done our part of the mission, they're as good as dead, all we gotta do now is forget those fucking freaks ever existed. I sure hope the guy in the brass who started this stupid experiment gets what's coming to him."

"I just hope we don't get caught up in all these internal politics and get killed." The passenger silently responded as the van slowly pulled away from the operation site, where stage two was about to begin.

As the team reached the building Zulu took point and lead them to a side ally on the right side of the building where the surveillance was reported to be weakest. As he approached their entry point, a metal door, he noticed a slight movement on the roof of a building down the ally and across the street. With lightning reflexes and superhuman eyesight, enhanced by his HUD, he moved in a blur, shouldering, taking aim, and firing a single shot in stride, not slowing down until he knelt on one side of the door, analyzing the building's roof for more movement as his team approached, unfazed by his sudden engagement. They took their positions by the door and waited for Zulu's hand signal to breach the door.

Zulu, satisfied at seeing no more movement, made a fist and lightly punched the wall with a black gloved hand. Immediately, Mike walked up to the metal door and ripped it open, tearing the lock holding the door shut out of the wall with the door. It wasn't quiet, but it beat blowing the door open with explosives. Mike then quickly lunged inside followed by the rest of the team, Zulu taking up the rear, sweeping the ally one last time with an analytical gaze before moving inside.

Once inside they spread out, Zulu with Echo and Lima, Mike with Oscar, and Romeo with Victor. The predetermined squads moved to different parts of the building, with squad ZEL going directly toward the middle of the building where the EMP happened, squad MO heading toward the rear of the building, and squad RV moving to the front to form a pincer with MO, pushing anyone to the middle or left side where they would be rounded up and eliminated, as the left side was flush to another building and had no exits.

As ZEL made their way to the middle Zulu kept in touch with MO and RV via their helmets. So far, neither MO nor RV and heard or seen anyone. Zulu felt his enhanced senses giving him uneasy feelings that something was very wrong. He made a hand signal to his squad to be extra cautious and whispered to MO and RV to do the same. When his squad reached the center of the building they found a giant raised platform with an oval shaped ring suspended over it by chains. It had thousands of wires of varying thicknesses and colors running from it to many different machines throughout the room.

Zulu whispered to MO and RV for a report. Both had rendezvoused on the left side and had found no one. He ordered them to regroup with him in the center and told Echo and Lima to secure the room. When MO and RV arrived Zulu had Mike and Victor examine the machine while ordering Romeo and Oscar to join Echo and Lima on the perimeter check. Mike and Victor were very technically adept, as well as undergoing specific training for this mission, and quickly got the oval ring turned on. Once it turned on though, all hell broke loose. Zulu could barely keep up with what was happening. First a loud whirring happened as the oval formed some strange opaque field which filled the whole ring. Once the field reached the oval rim a massive EMP devastated their helmets and HUDs, shorting them out and leaving them without any tactical readouts or team vitals. Just as the EMP wave fried their HUDs, the ceiling seemed to explode and ropes snaked down as men rappelled into the building immediately opening fire on Zulu and his team with massive rifles. Zulu, disoriented slightly but with a steely resolve, barked orders for his team to take cover and return fire, not that they needed to be told that, but he knew that issuing orders in this situation showed his team he was still in control of the situation and was not panicking.

Zulu slid into cover beside Victor and Mike and ordered them to focus fire where Lima, Romeo, Oscar, and Echo were being overrun. They quickly adjusted and poured lead into a group of men who had landed by Echo and Lima, meanwhile Zulu focused on shooting down the men still rappelling into the building, causing men to start raining from the sky, but they kept coming, and worse, they were using the ground entrances as well. The sudden influx of hostiles would have broken any normal teams moral, but Zulu and his team weren't normal, and dying wasn't something they were trained to be afraid of.

Lima was the first to go down. Zulu saw from across the room as Lima was charged while reloading and torn apart by the massive rifles the enemy carried. He felt a prick of fire in his head, an emotion, struggling to get free of his sub consciousness, but was quickly swallowed up by a cool liquid like feeling. Instead of being able to focus on Lima's death, he could only focus on the weapons the men were using when they gunned down Lima. Zulu analyzed that they were of an extremely large caliber, firing a massive solid flat slug meant to pulverize whatever it hit and render any type of medical treatment or natural healing useless.

Echo and Romeo went down next as the enemy stopped rappelling in and stormed in through the ground level entrances, storming to the center of the building and overrunning their defensive ring. Zulu screamed for everyone to get to the raised platform and get prone. He leaped up there first and laid underneath the oval ring assuring himself it was high enough to give them ample cover before having everyone else break cover to join him. He covered their movement as best he could but Oscar was hit in the back and he went down hard. Zulu again felt the fire in his head, getting stronger as he watched his men die. He heard a wet crackly explosion next to him and blood and brain matter splattered his face. He glanced over at Mike, only to see his head was what exploded.

Zulu growled, got up into a kneeling position, the fire of raw anger and frustration evaporating the cool liquid feeling in his head. He screamed a loud, long sound of anguish as he sprayed the room, pivoting to the left and shooting down everyone in his crosshair. His spray of bullets penetrated the machines and consoles lining the room, causing an alarm to sound and the oval ring began to hum louder and louder with an increasing pitch. He heard a cry of pain and saw Victor roll off of the platform from a slug impact. When Zulu turned to face forward his world went slow as his heightened instincts kicked in.

His eyes caught sight of a slug headed for his chest, causing his mind to jump to inhuman processing levels of speed and react. He released all the air in his lungs, deflating them to reduce the risk of the sternum and ribs puncturing them when the slug hit. He didn't have time to turn sideways to try and get away with a glancing hit, so he collapsed/threw himself backwards as the slug hit, his backward momentum softening the impact considerably as he went with the impact instead of resisting it. Zulu was flung backward into the oval, disappearing from sight as the oval whined and finally caused a meltdown, the power retention systems in the building failing catastrophically, the overload of power from the ring causing the building to explode.