Peter Watts - Crysis: Legion

This novel adaptation is based upon the original story treatment of Crysis 2. Various elements have been added and/or expanded upon to provide a fuller prose fiction experience. You may therefore notice some variation from game play. Enjoy.

Cevat Yerli and the Crysis 2 team

Crysis: Legion is a work of fiction.
Names, places, and incidents either are
products of the authors imagination
or are used fictitiously.

A Del Rey Trade Paperback Original

Copyright 2011 by Crytek GmbH.

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Del Rey,
an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group,
a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

D EL R EY is a registered trademark and the
Del Rey colophon is a trademark
of Random House, Inc.

Crytek and Crysis are registered trademarks
or trademarks of Crytek GmbH in the USA,
Germany, and/or other countries.

eISBN: 978-0-440-42359-1

www.delreybooks.com

Cover design: Phil Balsman
Cover illustration: Dima Gait, Bruce Kennedy, Malcolm Tween, Robert Farnworth, and Kevin Scully ( 2011 Crytek GmbH)

v3.1

The following document is derived from voice recordings and technical reports provided anonymously to MacroNet. It is therefore difficult to corroborate many of the allegations contained herein. Official responses from the corporate and political entities involvedthe United Nations, the Pentagon, CryNet and their parent megacorp Hargreave-Raschhave ranged from no-comment to outright denial. Both MacroNet and Del Rey have been served with numerous subpoenas compelling us to reveal our sources. We have also been threatened with a variety of civil and criminal charges, ranging from industrial espionage to treason, should we proceed with publication.

We have decided to proceed regardless. The subpoenas are moot, since we do not know the identity of our sources. Whoever provided these materials went to great lengths to protect their anonymity, including (by all accounts) the destruction of Googles OPG server farm off the coast of Catalina. Even if we wanted to cooperate with the authorities, we would have nothing to offer them.

As for potential counts of treason and other national-security-related charges, we have been advised thatwhile we may technically be in violation of written statuteschances of actual prosecution are negligible. The current administration is fully occupied trying to deal with the very threats described in this volume. New York City lies in ruins, and any number of other major cities are at risk of a similar fate; if even half the allegations contained in this document are true, the entire planet is under immediate threat. Should the authorities wish to waste valuable resources on doomed attempts at censorship under these circumstances, that is their choice.

Besides, if they could have spared the guns to take us out, they would have done so by now.

Tricia Pasternak
Senior DHS Communications Liaison, Del Rey

War would end if the dead could return.

Stanley Baldwin

Son, you seem to think this is some kind of game.

Jacob Hargreave

The thing is, I thought it was all our fault.

Its not that far off from what the Greens have been whining about since the last goddamn century. Global warmsorry, anthropogenic climate change. Tidal waves, rising sea levels, half the planets population wandering around looking for a place to crash since their homes got flooded out. Theres malaria in the Baltic now, did you know that? A tropical disease. In the fucking Baltic. And somehow South America turned into bloody Siberia when no one was looking, something about melting icepacks short-circuiting the ocean currents. The whole worlds fighting over fresh water like a pack of starving dogs with one stripped bone among them, and then Brazil started shooting all those sulfates into the stratosphere andwell, it was turning out just like the environazis said, only way worse and way fucking faster. None of the really nasty stuff was supposed to happen for another forty or fifty years, right?

So were fucked, and it looks like we fucked ourselves, and all the alarmist whitecoats we shat on before are telling us its too late now, its all planetary thermal inertia and unstable breakpoints and big ships turn slowly. Theres no way to keep the place from blowing up but maybe we can at least contain the explosion a bit, you know? Try to keep the peace, share whatevers left of the loaves and fishes, keep the worst of the riots from hitting the good ol US of A. Maintain some kind of order.

Thats why I signed up. Thats why all of us did. Wed fucked things up by snarfing pork rinds and playing video games while the world turned to shit, and joining the marines wasI dont know. Penance. A chance to make amends.

Except it wasnt us after all, not really, not yet. It was these fuckers from outer space, it was that bloody cryo weapon of theirs, that secret run-in way over in fucking China. We may have primed the avalanche, but Ling Shan was the snowball that started it rolling. And that was just a skirmish, that was so small they even managed to cover it up. A presidential directive or two, a few strategic pulse bombs to fry seismo and satcam, maybe a handful of surgical kills to take care of any Koreans out fishing in the wrong place at the wrong time. All youre left with is a few fuzzy rumors so whacked that not even Fox News would stoop low enough to run with them. Then when the whole world starts listing to starboard a couple of months down the road, you blame it all on greedy shortsighted humans and their damn fossil-fuel economy.

But it was just a skirmish, Roger, and you know what?

Sos this.

N22 Alcatraz/Prophet (tentative desig.awaiting update),
excerpted from Manhattan Incursion Debrief
27/08/2023

Voice-mike intercept, Forensic Debrief, Manhattan Incursion
Subject ID: Unknown (code nameAlcatraz)
27/08/2023

Laurence Barnes, I think. Prophet.

Alcatraz, then. Whatever. It doesnt matter. Of course I know the stats: Im dead, not senile. Name, rank, serial number. Doesnt mean shit. Thats not who I am anymore.

Im the guy being debriefed by a low-level functionary because his bosses are too chickenshit to risk being in the same room, thats who. You expect me to think you volunteered for this gig? You think the higher-ups wanted to bring you into the loop, you think they wouldnt be in here themselves if they werent afraid I might go off the reservation again given half a chance?

Youre lying.

No, thats an empirical fact. Your skin conductivity just went up 13 percent. Your eye saccades increased by 24. And you dont want to get into your vocal stress harmonics. You may think you sound pretty solid, but believe me: In the upper registers youre squealing like a little girl.

I can tell stuff like that now. Its not the augmentsits not just the augments. Im not reading numbers off a tactical overlay or anything, its moreintegrated. I just know this shit. I know a lot of things Im not supposed to.

But youve got nothing to worry about. Really. If I had any interest in killing you, youd have been dead before you got through the door. You must realize that.