Project Freelancer: The Next Generation

by Agentminnesota187

Project Freelancer is in shambles after the sudden revolt! With most of the freelancers who appeared on the board dead, the Director must seek out new replacements! But when they find out the reason for the revolt, who will the newbies stand with? The Director? Or the ghosts that haunt him?

1. Prologue

Prologue

Two months have passed since the Tragedy - the Crash - of Sidewinder.

People were stunned into a trance throughout the duration of the recovery phase. Time slowed to a crawl as the truth no one had expected had sunk into everyone's minds: Almost every single top Freelancer had died. Six of them in total, only Agent Washington and Agent Utah remaining alive in Project Freelancer. And no one really knew where Agent Florida had run off to, nor believed it when the Director claimed he had also died. Agent Texas also disappeared in a similar way.

All main objectives were gone out of the window. All missions paused. Even the Director shut himself into his quarters to grieve, though not for very long. In the end, the truth of what had occurred reached every single soldier, medic, and pilot in the Mother of Invention.

It had all started directly after the latest battle against the Insurrectionists. A civil war had broken out in the Freelancer ranks, started by Agent Texas and her mission to free the Alpha, - whom none has even heard of since - and Agent North Carolina and her ambition to reclaim her spot as number one on the leaderboard.

Wyoming was the first to die, shot in the head by Agent York in the Freelancer's own locker room. York was then killed by Carolina, his neck snapped as he hit a support beam during their brawl in the elevator shaft. Agent Carolina herself was murdered by Maine; Thrown off a cliff after getting her own Artificial Intelligence units ripped out of her skull. Maine was then shot by Tex, and no one knows where the black-armoured Freelancer resides to this day. And to top it all off in a blood-soaked bow, the twins' bodies were found not that long after; Footage of the hall they fought in recording how South Dakota had killed her brother before killing herself.

After what happened, many of the remaining Freelancers went on their own paths. Some - Illinois, Arizona, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and more - went off on smaller side missions, never to return. Others outright quit the project, preferring to work for the UNSC or wanting to leave the battlefield altogether. In the time span of two weeks, Project Freelancer was down to less than half of its original soldiers. But another two weeks was all it took for the Project to grow strong once again. The Mother of Invention was rebuilt, and all the (excluding Sigma and Gamma, who were… eradicated) were paired with new soldiers. A new generation of Freelancers stepped forth to replace the empty slots on the leaderboard. Another month later, it appeared as if the Tragedy of Sidewinder had never happened.