Chapter 1 Overview

Overview

The newly recruited team of NATO special operators arrives at Voss Dynamics’ Arizona campus, is briefed on the emerging threat of fragment-empowered individuals, and dispatched on their first mission: the live capture of a young man in Afghanistan who can detonate himself like a suicide bomber and survive. Returning to the Voss Campus, the team receives Voss Combat Suits — experimental power armour — and begins training and customisation. Voss reveals a portal to an alien planet called Terra, constructed from meteor fragments, and tasks the team with a recon mission after a previous expedition vanished. The team discovers a dead alien civilisation, a hostile insectoid species, and evidence of the lost team’s fate.

Following the Terra recon, the team is granted a 48-hour pass and travels to Las Vegas for R&R. The trip turns eventful: Jens accidentally opens a roadside portal to Terra using a personal meteorite fragment, a Terran Insectoid kills a hotel cleaning lady before Sammy destroys it (Bellagio Portal Incident), and Ronnie sells the drained meteorite fragment known as The Potato to a buyer named Igor for $500,000 — brokered through Rick Harrison at the Gold and Silver Pawn Shop. The team also encounters The Glowing Hand Man performing an unexplained healing on the Las Vegas Strip. Upon return to Voss Campus, Voss briefs the team on a Second Meteor Event and assigns them to fragment recovery — Guy leading Team 1.

The Second Meteor Event recovery mission sends the team across the Northern Hemisphere. In Greenland, they witness The Dragon intercept a fragment at superhuman speed. In Iceland, Ronnie touches a fragment bare-handed and absorbs its energy. In Norway, command demonstrates the suit kill switch by freezing Ronnie in place. In Russia, the team encounters a massive fragment-mutated bear that has already killed one of Major Jenkins’ operators. Sammy destroys it with an invisible explosive ambush, but it regenerates — Ronnie ultimately severs its head from atop its neck while Guy incinerates the remains. Back at Voss Campus, Ronnie manifests energy-draining abilities, and Guy discovers a classified folder revealing the third incoming object isn’t a meteor — it’s labeled “Hungry God.”