Crysis: Legion
by Peter Watts
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.
Copyright Page
Crysis: Legion is a work of fiction.
Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s 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.
DEL REY 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.
ISBN10: 0-345-52678-3
ISBN-13: 978-0-345-52678-6
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
About the Author
Biologist, author, and convicted felon, Peter Watts (author of Blindsight and the Rifters trilogy) appears to be especially popular with people who have never met him. At least, pretty much every award his work has received comes from overseas (with the exception of a recent Hugo, which probably won on a sympathy vote in the wake of recent encounters with the Department of Homeland Security). His science fiction, oddly enough, has been used as a core text in science and philosophy courses as well as the usual gamut of SF electives; he only wishes his actual science had been taken half as seriously, back in the day. Both he and his cat have appeared in the prestigious journal Nature.
Editor’S Note
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 involved—the United Nations, the Pentagon, CryNet and their parent megacorp Hargreave-Rasch—have 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 Google’s 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 that—while we may technically be in violation of written statutes—chances 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.
Crysis: Legion
War would end if the dead could return.
Son, you seem to think this is some kind of game.
The thing is, I thought it was all our fault.
It’s not that far off from what the Greens have been whining about since the last goddamn century. Global warm—sorry, anthropogenic climate change. Tidal waves, rising sea levels, half the planet’s population wandering around looking for a place to crash since their homes got flooded out. There’s 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 world’s 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 and—well, 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 we’re fucked, and it looks like we fucked ourselves, and all the alarmist whitecoats we shat on before are telling us it’s too late now, it’s all planetary thermal inertia and unstable breakpoints and big ships turn slowly. There’s 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 whatever’s 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.
That’s why I signed up. That’s why all of us did. We’d fucked things up by snarfing pork rinds and playing video games while the world turned to shit, and joining the marines was—I don’t know. Penance. A chance to make amends.
Except it wasn’t 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 you’re 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?
So’s this.
Prophecy
Voice-mike intercept, Forensic Debrief, Manhattan Incursion
Subject ID: Unknown (code name Alcatraz)
27/08/2023
Laurence Barnes, I think. Prophet.
Alcatraz, then. Whatever. It doesn’t matter. Of course I know the stats: I’m dead, not senile. Name, rank, serial number. Doesn’t mean shit. That’s not who I am anymore.