Prologue
“My name is Rei Keller, I’m 19 years old, and I live in Ohio, the city of troubles. Today is May 14, 2037. In 1945, when the United States threatened Japan with nuclear weapons, many Japanese moved to the States. So my mother did. On August 27, 2026, the apocalypse happened — the end of the world, at least for a huge number of people. No one knows the exact reason or who launched the nuclear warheads first, but one way or another, many cities turned to ashes. But even that wasn’t the real “end” — radiation killed more people than the bombs themselves did.
The government had to act fast, and in their haste, scientists developed an anti-radiation compound. There wasn’t much time to figure things out, so the compound was released as a gas in populated areas exposed to radiation. The mixture really did protect people from radiation — but it also had side effects…
Half of the people turned into tall, pimply, ravenous with raven-colored skin monsters with a gaping maw instead of a face. They were dubbed vermin. The others were luckier — if you could call it that. They lost their sight and sense of smell. Sometimes, the combination of lost senses varied, but in most cases — like mine — that’s how it was.
The government tried to fix its mistakes and developed a device that could process the very gas they had created. This time, they actually succeeded — they created the so-called Red Eye. The device restored the ability to see and redirected all the energy from the government’s previous failed inventions into different parts of the body. I’m not a scientist, so I can’t say exactly how it worked, but somehow, those who used the Red Eye gained unusual abilities. Some could see better and more precisely than others with “faces”; some could directly interact with molecules…
Of course, the first to regain their “faces” were the big shots and the rich. They shelled out a fortune to get their sight back — and immediately used their advantage. Some started capturing vermin to enslave them. Vermin had almost completely lost their minds, making them easy to control. These rich jerks sent their personal vermin into public places, forcing people to survive… And to survive, they had to pay tribute.
Apparently, this war threw us back a couple of centuries, to times when this kind of crap happened all the time. But there are always heroes — just like in my case.
Some scientist named Andrew Stone recreated the Red Eye and started restoring people’s faces. But there was a small problem… The device required an insane amount of energy, and Stone’s generator couldn’t produce it in large quantities. So he had to choose — he couldn’t give “faces” to everyone.
And so, the Defenders were created. The very ones who received faces from Andrew Stone’s Red Eye. Their extraordinary abilities were enough to fight back against the vermin enslaved by the rich ones.
Actually, these Defenders are incredibly brave. I’ve heard that excessive use of superpowers can drain the body and lead to death, yet they risk themselves to protect others just like them…
The world has changed a lot since then — a lot. New homes and cities have surely been built, even with the loss of sight. How sad that I can’t see it…”
