Interlude

In 1909, in return for financial aid, Tsar Nicholai II granted an association of British and French noblemen access to the Tunguska event site. These individuals acquired the first sample of a primitive bacteria. While they were not the first human beings to encounter that entity, they were the first to study it.

The noblemen would gain no valuable insight in that sample, but cultivated it nevertheless as a scientific oddity. After 1945, their successors, now including scientists from Germany and the United States, took another look at the Tunguska strain and, thanks to research on jews and Japanese-Americans during the war, found that it had the ability to not only remember genetic markers, but recombine DNA and RNA into viable and unviable configurations. It could be used to exterminate specific ethnic groups.

Carnival I, a classified project located in Springfield, Alaska, found, in 1963, that the Tunguska strain rejected harmful genes, foreign and native. In other words, when they attempted to introduce faulty genetic material in chimpanzees and dogs, the virus refused to implement the change and even used its existing repertoir of genetic material to correct malformations, increase intelligence, reduce depression and generally improve the test subjects in every way it could.

In 1964, the U.S. Government allowed Carnival II to proceed with human testing in Hope, Idaho. They used infrared lasers to wipe the virus' "memory", before providing it with faulty genetic samples, cancer cells, heart disease, taken from asian and african individuals, and innoculated the entire population with what they called DX-1118 A "Redlight strain".

The virus had no effect for 998 days. Children born in that time, however, were malformed, but not in the way one would have expected. The children appeared to be incomplete prototypes of something close to human, and getting closer with every failed iteration, with the next to last one living three years, only to die with the rest of the town in 1968, when the Redlight virus within Elizabeth Greene and her unborn child forced massive and grotesque growth in muscular and cerebral tissue in every last resident, enslaving them and forcing them to protect Greene from capture.

Ultimately, Greene was caught. The organisation, calling themselves "The Templars" or "Templar Industries" in the UK, realised it could not keep operating on American soil without a believable front, therefore, it assembled Blackwatch with the help of Vietnam war veteran General Peter Randall and his CIA contacts. In order to continue their research on Elizabeth Greene without Blackwatch, technically a U.S. Army regiment, being subject to Presidential or Congress authority, the Templars also created GenTek in 1989.

Dr. Mathieu Doublet, lead researcher in project Carnival I and resident of the underground town of Springfield, Alaska, was supposed to join GenTek in 1998, but the Redlight strain in Springfield proved as uncontrollable as the one in Hope and all residents were slaughtered. Robert Cross, a U.S. army specialist, lead a Delta force unit in the town to recover Dr. Doublet, but ended up wiping the entire town out instead.

He was subsequently recruited as a Captain for Blackwatch.

GenTek, under Raymond McMullen, made no progress with Redlight, the Tunguska Strain, Greene or her child, Pariah, for almost a decade, until two researchers, Alex Mercer and Karen Parker, joined the team. Mercer then "created" the Blacklight strain from samples taken out of green's bloodstream, focusing on its possible use as a cure for cancer and other diseases. Unfortunately, GenTek's goal remained weaponization and, through Karen Parker, they were able to create DX-1118 C, a "smart" viral agent, capable of killing instantly or remaining dormant depending on circumstances and unable to cross large bodies of water or subsist for more than an hour without a host.

Alex Mercer therefore decided to expose GenTek, the Templars and Blackwatch, but was intercepted at Penn Station and, before dying, released DX-1118 C… Which killed everything in close proximity, but did not otherwise spread or manifest itself in a meaningful way, as it instead focused on trying to "fix" the deceased Alex Mercer.