The Wings of Freedom

Chapter Two

Watching the people mill about on Earth was pretty boring for the first hundred years or so. Everyone Dove knew had gotten married, had children and eventually died. But then the interesting things started happening.

Dagenhurst Corp., the bioengineering company Dove had worked for when she was still alive, had gotten closer and closer to what the Director referred to as the serum. Ominous, right? Anyway, the Director's goal was to create a serum that would make the entire human race better. Bigger, faster, stronger, an increased life span and even immune to diseases. He got closer and closer to it every day; he tested it on himself first, of course, then on the homeless. If something went wrong, no one would miss them.

Meanwhile, the radioactivity and chemical waste from Dagenhurst's experiments were destroying the planet. The humans, so absorbed in their own lives, failed to notice until the ozone layer was gone and Earth began to fry. The extra heat from the Sun had also caused Earth's molten core to heat up, and the planet turned into an oven. An explosive oven.

The increased internal and external temperatures caused an increase in gases under the Earth's crust. Without many natural outlets, the gas built and built and built until huge mounds formed where the crust was thinnest. When geologists drilled into the crust to get samples of such a phenomenon, all that built up gas pushed its way through that tiny hole. As a result, half the planet exploded, killing all but a few thousand survivors.

Over half of these lucky humans had evacuated into a huge underground matrix that spanned what once had been the country of Germany and half of France. Now it was the only land left on a small planet that had once been magnificent.

When nearly half of Earth exploded, Dagenhurst's unfinished serum had leaked into the Earth's crust. With the inflamed temperature of the core and the heat from the Sun still acting on what was left of Earth, the serum evaporated into steam, enveloping the planet. What was left of the human race that managed to dwell above ground was surrounded by the evaporated serum. Needless to say, it changed them drastically.

The rest of humanity now dwelled under the surface. The matrix that had been originally built for the fabled apocalypse was doing precisely what it was built for. It could comfortably house eight hundred people and was completely self-sustaining for seven hundred years. In that time, life above ground had nearly been forgotten; now they were just legends that may not have even been true.

However, that seventh generation of survivors were in for a shock when their underground haven could no longer support them and they had no choice but to emerge into the sunlight. In the seven hundred years after the disaster, Earth had become much like it had been before. Without as much human activity, the ozone layer had slowly reformed and the Earth cooled back to its normal temperature.

The trees and plants had grown back, much like the result after a volcano erupts and some bird and animal species had somehow managed to survive. Not only were the humans confronted with this, but they were also confronted with a predator of their own.

Dagenhurst's serum had wrought massive changes to the humans who had been left to survive on their own. Over the last seven hundred years, nearly all of their genomic sequence had been massively mutated. They were huge, between five and fifteen meters tall. The average ones weren't very fast, but there were some that had so many mutations in their DNA that they were more related to animals than to humans. They had little to no comprehension capabilities; they ran on pure instinct, like primitive animals. In fact, they were almost like primitive humans.

These creatures are photosynthetic, creating their own sugars, but only under extreme circumstances. As the emergent humans quickly discovered, their favorite food source are people.

Over time, these creature came be known as Titans.