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Prologue She looked out over what had once been a thriving city, unable to believe the destruction she saw. It unfolded before her eyes, a war-ravaged landscape no longer peopled by the beautiful, the affluent. Now Los Angeles lay in ruins, the dregs of society living off the remnants of civilization, one scanty meal to the next. Peri Johnson stood on what had been the mountain overlooking the Hollywood sign, not quite believing this was the teeming city she’d left just five years before. The sun reflecting off her aviator’s Ray Bans and the trim, expensive cut of her blue flight suit seemed to mock the devastation and poverty laid out before her. Shaking her head slowly, she tried to take it all in, absorb the impact, but her eyes kept straying, almost as if ordered, to the crooked “D” seventy-five feet below. It was all that was left of Hollywood; all that remained of the glitz and glamour of the movie capitol of the world. They’d seen the news reports broadcast to the space station, but none of the colonists had really believed it, and it wasn’t exactly something you wanted to dwell on. Granted, they knew a temblor had hit Southern California, and it was reportedly a bad one. But the news coming from planet-side had become increasingly hysterical over the past year, even more hyped than usual, so they’d pawned the utter destruction displayed on their personal viewpads to be a shameless grab at ratings, then turned back to their training. The fact that none of them had ties to their mother world any longer had taken the guilt out of their group indifference quite nicely. Now they could be blind no longer. Omega Five had returned to Earth, its training complete, its inhabitants enhanced to the nth degree by low-gravity living, nano-tech implants and the innumerable scientific benefits of living and working in a world void of virtually all stimuli. There had been no ticker-tape parades, no blinking wall of vacuous cameras. Their return had ceased being newsworthy as cities across the world began to disintegrate, from the LAs of the world, with its natural catastrophe, to the Detroits and their utter collapse from the inside out. Now they were back, here to complete a mission they’d never really believed. Not really. But how could they? Being back on Earth was almost too much. Not the devastation, the Fivers could view that with a dispassionate, scientific eye. No, it was the colors, the smells, the tastes that wafted through the wind and danced on the tongue. There was too much to see, too much to do. Peri longed to flee back to the comforting confines of Edwards Space Command, nestled in the dry, desolate scrublands of the high desert. Protected. Unchanged. She wanted the bland, the dun-colored, the metallic tasting again. She wanted the company of her fellow Fivers, with their witty humor and reference-ridden repartee. It was not to be so. Each of the Fivers, all fifty-three of them, had been dispatched to their home city, their mission now more timely than ever. Their implants would keep them in touch with their handlers and with the other fifty-two of their clan. They would find suitable mates, reproduce, and begin to populate the world with strong, intelligent progeny--and in doing so, repair the ills of the world. Five years ago, it had seemed a noble goal, something attainable, if a bit imperialistic. Now, looking down at the carnage of her beloved Los Angeles, Peri wasn’t so sure. With one last look and a tiny shudder, Peri began to walk down the hill, heading toward her future--and the future of the world.
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