As a country familiar with hate-motivated violence, it came as no surprise that anti-AMP hate groups would be on the rise in the UK. The UHF has connections with several sister-orga-nizations within Great Britain. These groups already had ties into both houses of the British parliament, connections they use to enact AMP registration laws. Around Great Britain, police mobilized to ‘escort’ AMPs to registration cen-ters. When the police turned a blind eye to the firebombing of a business owned by mutant sympathizers, social activists swarmed into the street to protest. The situation is tense,
partic-ularly around London and Cardiff.
A handful of AMPs and their sympathizers hide in the miles of forgotten underground tunnels beneath London. This refugee city-within-a-city has ties with the Changelings in America and other similar groups around Europe. Knowledge of this “London Under-ground” has been reported in the tabloid in ways so sensational that few believe them. Of course, that was the whole point of planting the stories in the first place.
In August the novel, “The Weal of the World” was published in the UK. A semi-au-tobiographical narrative of an Iranian ex-pat living in London, it dealt with the author’s dis-covery of his mutant abilities, and his internal battle to find balance between his religious beliefs, his adopted culture and the shocking changes to his body and mind. Despite in-tense critical praise for its compassionate and insightful narrative, and despite being nomi-nated for several book awards, no publisher outside of Europe has seen fit to print it. In De-cember, after receiving multiple death-threats and fatwas, unknown assailants murdered the author in his home with scrawls of “Death to mutos,” in spray-paint over the spines of the books in his extensive library.
France
The impacts AMPs have created on the rest of the world have had little effect on France because of the simple and curious fact that not a single mutant has appeared on French soil. Even cursory demographic analy-sis shows France should have dozens of AMPs by the end of 2016, but it does not even have a small handful. This lack is a complete mys-tery, especially as the nation is adjacent to Germany, one of the nations with the highest AMP population. This statistical anomaly has the Seekers not just curious, but worried, and they’ve organized several research teams to try to find the cause.
Meanwhile, the Fifth Republic is using this breathing space to try to approach the prob-lem without the sense of emergency that has
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blinkered other countries. The government in-troduced new training programs to police and other emergency responders. An open public debate occurs at all levels of society. France sends observers to study Germany’s Extraor-dinary Crimes Research Group. France feels ready to greet its first citizen AMP with cau-tious friendship, with a studied balance not afforded to any other industrial nation. Still it waits, and its people wonder if there isn’t already an AMP who can rebuff other AMPs living among them.
Germany
As one of the principles in Project Black, Ger-many has a very high per-capita population of AMPs. The governmental and social reaction to mutants in Germany is mixed. The view of the average German on the street is AMPs are peo-ple who have a problem and need help. While Germany has had troubles with AMP-related crimes, most Germans believe they are tempo-rary problems they can overcome. Hate groups have manufactured an image of non-German AMPs as universally criminal in intent; one high-profile incident involving foreign crime syndicates operating on German soil was enough to sway public opinion enough that Germany has started deporting foreign mutants.
Ironically, the AMPs involved in the incident in question were all German citizens.
Reflecting the mood of the nation, Ber-lin created legislation for the formation of the Ungewöhnliche Verbrechen Vorschungs-gruppe - the Extraordinary Crimes Research Group. This group, staffed by Sap scientists, detectives and forensic specialists, develop methods to identify AMP crimes and detain AMP criminals in such a way the justice sys-tem can handle them.
Meanwhile, Germany has also begun pro-grams to rehabilitate AMPs back into society.
These steps not only provide Germany with more stability than other countries, but also aid the German economy as rehabilitated AMPs filter into new roles in industry, engi-neering and science.
The case of Wilhelm Durchen illustrates the success of Germany’s programs. A salaried employee of Deutsche Technicorp, Durchen led a group of scientists developing nanobot technology. His research group had already made great progress, and under controlled conditions, their bot swarms were able to per-form unsupervised repairs on different types of machines. Deutsche Technicorp was ready to patent this technology and begin selling them into the marketplace.
Then Durchen - a man already in his mid-forties - awakened to his AMP heritage in the middle of a marketing demonstration. The corporate executives in attendance were hor-rified as the swarm of millimeter-sizes ma-chines broke out of their inductive workspace - a feat that should not have been possible - and began consuming Durchen. There was screaming, but not from Durchen, who sat on the ground, wrists on his knees, not resisting as his life’s work consumed his body. When the executives fled from the room, only Durchen’s assistants remained to try to help him. They tried to brush the nanobots off his body, but the machines attacked them. One of the as-sistants sustained wounds so grave he was in critical condition by the time he reached the University Hospital of Bonn.
By the time corporate security arrived on the scene, there was nothing left of Durchen.
However, the nano-machines had multiplied in mass, and as they rose up into a shambling human shape, the freaked-out security guards fired into the mass. The machine-entity sham-bled forward. The guard who lost his nerve and ran was spared the fate of the other, as the hungry machines consumed him.
The government quarantined the building and called in the Extraordinary Crimes Re-search Group. Antje Koch, the group’s comput-er expcomput-ert, hacked into the nano-swarm’s dis-tributed low-energy wireless communication protocol. To everyone’s surprise, she learned Durchen wasn’t dead, at least his mind wasn’t.
The swarm had absorbed his personality, memory and powers - the very same power that animated the swarm. Sadly, the process
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had driven Durchen mad.
Durchen escaped the quarantine zone and began rampaging around Bonn, dissem-bling matter and reforming it into child na-no-swarms. These swarms were not held in check by the least bit of human conscious-ness, and they attacked everyone and every-thing as they spread. The Group, unable to contain Durchen, focused on taking down these lesser nano-swarms. After two days of fighting, they discovered the swarms had a weakness to certain kinds of electro-magnet-ic frequency bursts - the same kind of energy that had contained them within their original inductive workspace.
The government declared a state of emer-gency in Bonn and began evacuating the city.
Just before the military initiated a plan to de-stroy Durchen with a missile barrage - better to demolish a quarter of the city than lose all of it, they reasoned - the Group finally corned Durchen in a wide-open parking lot where he would have nowhere to hide. Three trucks
mounted with what one observer described as “lightning-throwing cannons” were able to use synchronized electromagnetic bursts to contain and disable Durchen.
Durchen, although guilty of murdering several people and causing millions of Eu-ros worth of damage, never faced trial. After months of rehabilitation gave the human side of Durchen control over his new nano-swarm body, the Group offered him a position working in their Technology Research Division, which he accepted rather than face justice for his crimes.
Poland
In October of 2016, journalist Bianka James with Warsaw’s Gazeta Wyborcza was desperate for a new story. Her career had been struggling for the last two years, and she knew if she didn’t come up with a big story soon, they’d let her go. That’s when the mail-room sent her up a mysterious package with her name and address, but no return address.
Inside, Bianka found a beat-up leather
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nal, a map of Poland folded so many times it was almost illegible and a single video tape.
She absorbed the contents of the video tape and journal, and began banging out a story on her typewriter. The next day, she had four column-inches on page three under the head-line, “Local Student Missing After Uncovering Lost Nazi Warehouse.”
“... Adalbert Wojcik, junior at the University of Warsaw, did not spend his summer hanging out with buddies, trav-eling with his family, or taking a sum-mer internship. Instead, he took a scant
€5,000 and traveled around Krasnystaw County looking for the unmarked grave of his grandfather, a forgotten war hero.
Instead, what he found will shock you...”
Accompanying the story was a grainy im-age taken from Adalbert’s film, showing a dimly lit interior of a chamber that looked like a cross between a tomb and an aban-doned science laboratory. As Bianka’s story explained, after realizing its history-reshap-ing importance Adalbert had resealed the lab as best he could. Then, for an unknown reason he packaged all of his findings into a bundle, and shipped them to Bianka. She concluded her story by saying she was unable to reach Adalbert Wojcik; neither his parents nor the university had seen him since then.
A few days after publishing her story, Bian-ka received a phone call from a man claiming to be Adalbert Wojcik. The voice on the phone asked her to meet him in secret at a seedy ho-tel. Bianka intuition told her it was a trap, but she went anyway. When she got the hotel, two men in masks jumped her. Only Bianka’s cun-ning, glib wit and a hefty dose of good luck got her out of that situation alive.
What did Adalbert find in that tomb?
Where did he vanish? Why did he send his notes to Bianka? Whatever it was, it must be important if people were willing to kill for it.
Telling no one but her editor where she was going, Bianka left Warsaw for Krasnystaw to investigate. The next morning, a mail bomb
exploded in her office. Following Adalbert’s map and notes, she has begun retracing the youth’s footsteps, hoping to find the hidden bunker for herself and to reveal to the world what its secrets are.
A secret the Suppression will kill to keep from getting out.
Rome
As panic and wonder spread through the world as more and more mutants appeared, there was a mixed reaction from the religions of the world. Debate over the nature of AMPs and the source of their powers became common-place. While some twisted the interpretation of their religious scriptures to be in line with what they already feared about mutants, the Vatican took a strong stance in the other direction.In a papal bull, the Pope wrote in part, “These are extraordinary times filled with extraordinary people. But we must remember that they are still people and they have souls. Within them is the capacity for redemption.” The bull went on to clarify that no priest could refuse to give communion to or hear confession from an AMP, which a few had already done.
This decree paved the way for many coun-tries to stop reacting in panic to the AMP situ-ation, and instead turn toward trying to find a way of incorporating mutants into their societ-ies. Sadly, not everyone listened to His Holiness.
Russia
During the months after the US president’s assassination, Russia diplomats played a coy game avoiding talking about or acknowledg-ing the existence of mutants. Russian media downplayed the events in the United States, even going so far as to say that any hint of a special actor was paranoid Western propa-ganda. At the same time, Russian watchers could not help but notice the surge of Spets-na’s activity within Russia’s own borders, and reports trickled out of people gone missing.
Then, in April, Russian unveiled to its own people and to the world the newest branch
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of its armed forces. Walking and flying with the thousands of regular soldiers across Red Square, two dozen super-powered AMPs wear-ing crisp Russian military uniforms saluted the Prime Minister. This was followed by a media blitz; the state-controlled news sources hailed the arrival of the Super Power Age, and Russia’s unique position in it, the first, and so far only country to have an AMP military force.
Politicians in Europe and the US denounced Russia’s move as “provocative.” Pundits called it the “new arms race,” but it appeared to be a race only Russia was running in.
Then, not a week after their public unveil-ing, Russia’s super-powered armed service members went into their first combat mission.
When terrorist seized control of the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan called on Russian aid. The world watched as the disciplined and ruthless Russian AMPs spearheaded a counter-strike against the terrorists. They dis-patched the terrorists with surgical precision, causing no civilian casualties. Russia hailed it
as a major success of the AMP initiative.
A few months later, Russia mobilized its AMP Section again, this time against an an-ti-Russian demonstration turned violent in Chechnya. This time, the battle was carried on all major news networks and social media as Russian AMPs and tanks fought armed insur-gents in the streets of Grozny. After the con-flict dragged on for two weeks of door-to-door fighting, Russia claimed victory, again hailing its AMP Special Forces as the deciding factor.
As Moscow banged the drum of nationalism ever harder, the nations bordering Russia grew more and more nervous about a new wave of Russian expansionism. Ukraine, Norway and the Baltic states scurried to kick start their own AMP Initiatives to match Russia’s new threat, but none has had as much success as Russia so far. By May, Russia had annexed Ukraine, which only heightened everyone’s paranoia.
While the Russian government and media crows about these success stories, watchdog groups are calling Russia’s apparent secret mu-tant round-up a violation of human rights, going so far as to call it illegal imprisonment. Russia denies these accusations, saying only that the soldiers in its AMP Section are all volunteers.
To the Russian citizen on the street, AMPs are a source of national pride. In their view, while the rest of the world scrambles to cope with the appearance of mutants, Russia is showing leadership in harnessing this new power to benefit its people. Public appearanc-es by the AMP Section aiding in public works have helped foster this image in the common consciousness. As a new air of nationalistic pride grows, those whose family or friends have disappeared remain silent in fear of at-tracting unwanted attention.