On the 17th April 1972 a rogue comet known as Lee-Kosolov struck the Earth and sent human progress back hundreds of years. Mankind would have been wiped out altogether if it had not been for the fact the comet broke up into several smaller pieces as it swung around the sun but each of these chunks was deadly and when they made landfall they struck with a force greater than the worst nuclear explosion imaginable.

Paris was gone.

New York was gone.

San Fransisco was gone.

Japan was obliterated after it was hit by the largest piece.

Thousands had already been evacuated from the impact zones but despite this millions died, either directly from the blasts of the secondary disasters that followed.

Despite the various governments having created contingency plans even they could not have foreseen the scale of the destruction and were woefully unprepared.

With power and amenities gone on a global scale the human race had been taken back to the middle ages.

Mankind’s progress remained stalled as the people concentrated on rebuilding their shattered world and historians would eventually record that nearly two centuries would pass before global industry, commerce and technology was at the same level it had been before the disaster.

The shining symbols of humanity’s triumph over disaster came in the form of four mega cities established on the ashes of the old world. The first of these was Atlantica, built where New York once stood. The second was Pacifica built where San Francisco had been. Later Europa was created where Paris had once been and finally New Tokyo was built on reclaimed land on the west coast of Australia. Since Australia had taken in many of the Japanese refugees it seemed natural for them to build a new city there to honour the original Tokyo lost when the country was wiped from the face of the globe.

In the intervening years the political borders changed as new alliances were made brought about initially by the disaster. Some had hoped the catastrophe would bring about a long lasting world peace but as things returned to normal mankind soon remembered it had not lost its penchant for fighting war.

**Alpha Humans**

Away from the political wranglings between the new super powers, as human progress seemed to start moving forward the human race it seemed had taken a new evolutionary step with the appearance of what became “Alpha humans” or simply “Alphas,” ordinary people with extraordinary abilities.

Scientists were at a loss to explain this rare “offshoot” of the human race for they were so rare it was hard to get any data to extrapolate but after several decades of research the Alphas were discovered to have ancestors that had survived a mysterious plague that had killed many following the initial comet impacts. At the time such diseases were prevalent without a proper medical infrastructure so the true nature of the plague was never fully investigated.

It was only looking into the history that scientists studying Alphas began to consider that the comet might have carried some sort of extra-terrestrial biohazard that either killed those it came in contact with or had somehow mutated the DNA of the survivors. Why the effects of the mutation had appeared generations later though would be another mystery for once the revelation of Alphas became general knowledge they became targets. Feared by ordinary people for the dangers they could become Alphas often chose to hide their unique gifts.

Military forces around the globe viewed Alphas as either valuable assets or threat to security which was another reason for Alphas to remain discreet. However despite the risks some Alphas chose to use their gifts for the benefit of others. Those that did not join official agencies chose to use their skills to fight crime. Similarly there was an equal number of Alphas that decided to use their gifts for more negative purposes, becoming criminals or working for criminals.

**The Alphas Disappearance**

Within decades of the first Alphas appearing they inexplicably vanished. Scientists at first thought that the genetic offshoot had reached its natural end until CLEA, a global multi-nation task force discovered “Black Shadow” a global crime syndicate.

Black Shadow as an organisation considered Alphas to be a threat to their empire and so had decided to take it upon themselves to eliminate the problem by killing all Alphas they discovered, and they became very good at it.

Having infiltrated positions of power or corrupted those with power they were in a position to act on a global scale free from the problems of politics. Using a key piece of scientific evidence that all Alphas had a distinctive “diamond shaped birth mark” they were able to scour thousands of medical records and systematically eliminate Alphas, even those that had yet to manifest any “abilities”.

Word quickly spread in the Alpha community about mysterious assassins and those people aware of their ancestry got themselves as far away from society as possible but the remainder were not so lucky.

For two decades Black Shadow performed their evil work right under the nose of CLEA until the made the inevitable mistake of “missing” a target who became alerted of the assignation attempt after “accidentally” hacking a computer belonging to a Black Operative and obtaining fragments of a hit list.

The people of the hit list would band themselves together initially for mutual safety but after realising they were greater than the sum of their parts they decided to fight back and become known at Team Zodiac. After exposing Black Shadow operations in Atlantica, CLEA was able to destroy most of the organisation and once this was done Alphas once more were able to come out of hiding.

The new age of Alphas had begun.