Leonard flew over the camp, where everyone was gearing up for war. Normal humans couldn’t survive Mechron’s bio-plague, nor stand against his machines, and so did not apply. In total, more than five hundred Genomes had gathered in three camps around Sarajevo. Today would be a rare opportunity to go all-out. Sometimes, he felt like he lived in a world of matchboxes. It was a constant mental effort for Leo to contain his radiance and avoid burning everything around him. His thoughts changed from human to that of a star, wishing to burn bright and illuminate the cosmos. Though he didn’t age in his sun form, the Genome usually returned to his human self while not on missions, as he felt less like himself the longer he stayed transformed. Leonard’s human body had been transmuted into a living star, a mass of solar plasma only held together by a heart core and his own gravitational forces. The living sun gave one last glance at the iron city from his current high altitude before flying back to base at the speed of a fighter-jet. So while they might end up enemies one day, Leo would cut him some slack and they would part ways amicably. While he acted out of self-preservation, this Green Genome understood Mechron was an existential threat to all of mankind, and that he had to be stopped at all costs. Nidhogg was willing to help when so many wouldn’t, even crossing half a continent to offer support. Unfortunately, the Anti-Mechron Front couldn’t take Sarajevo without assistance, and the war had called for moral compromises. His followers had taken over a large part of Denmark and allowed their Geniuses to run some questionable medical experiments there. Though he kept to his territory and didn’t cause troubles unless provoked, that man was a villain, plain and simple. While he was proud to fight alongside the Shining Knight, Nidhogg’s involvement left a sour taste in Leo’s mouth. “Shining Knight and Nidhogg’s groups are in position.” “Yes.” The voice of Alice Martel, alias Pythia, answered through telepathy. The Anti-Mechron Front had slowly destroyed his major bases and killed his lieutenants over the last six years, and today, they finally gathered enough heroes to end the conflict once and for all. Mechron had spent the entirety of the Genome Wars bunkering in Sarajevo, letting his machines and Genome allies fight for him. Things quickly erupted into a European conflict, and then finally a nuclear exchange. His first act upon gaining his Elixir had been a terrorist attack against the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia for its perceived softness on war criminals, before escalating to waging war on Serbia. Pythia pieced together that he was a survivor of the Bosnian genocide and the Siege of Sarajevo in the mid-nineties, an electric engineer by trade. The Genome Wars had started here nine years ago and one way or another, they would end today.Įven long after he caused the end of the world, Mechron remained a mystery. When he looked at this tragedy from the heavens above, Leonard Hargraves could only feel sadness. Even the river Miljacka which once crossed the city had been dried up. The machine army stood there, organized into defensive formations, waiting for the battle to start without wasting any ounce of energy. Some of these machines were cyborgs, half-rotten corpses partly reanimated with tech when Mechron ran out of rare ore. Robots prowled the streets, from futuristic automated tanks to humanoid, two-meters tall cyclops, while flying drones occupied the skies. This miasma covering the city was a bioplague created to kill humans, leaving only machines unharmed. Finally, pylons on the valley’s mountains projected a red forcefield around the city, one powerful enough to shrug off NATO’s ICBMs. The tallest structure was Mechron’s fortress located in Sarajevo’s center, an infinity symbol-shaped fusion between a military base and a particle accelerator. The other buildings were factories, weapon-development facilities, turrets, and fearsome towers of black steel. Only decaying ruins remained of the old city, consumed by a noxious purple cloud. A steel graveyard ruled by a madman, its skies dark even during the brightest days. A perfect mix of small, pastoral houses and tall modern buildings, the city had housed events such as the 1984 Winter Olympic Games, survived the Yugoslavian wars, and thrived in the aftermath. Ruins of Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina October 2014.Ĭonstructed inside a valley surrounded by five mountains, Sarajevo had once been a beautiful place.