Blood Symphony

"Point Man" and Fettel

It all started with the team. F.E.A.R. Their acronym stood for, "First Encounter Assault Recon". This team was a secret operations group of the U.S. Government, and specialized in dealing with paranormal threats. Codename Point Man was assigned to this team, when F.E.A.R. had taken interest in his skills and extraordinarily reactive reflexes. After constant years of torture and horror from a strange paranormal phenomenon, he met his brother, Paxton Fettel. After they met, Fettel had command of a battalion of telepathically controlled clone supersoldiers, and their first mission involved seizing control of the Armacham Technology Corporation (ATC) headquarters, and killing all of its occupants.

But soon, Point Man received a new mission: To eliminate Fettel, while operating in conjunction with the Delta Force. Fettel was located by means of a satellite tracking device and hunted by F.E.A.R. and Delta Force over several locations. While Fettel evaded capture by the special forces, Point Man witnessed unexplained, and occasionally life-threatening, paranormal phenomena, including hallucinations that frequently afflicted him, all of which revolved around a red-dressed little girl. Laptops found in the course of the mission, remotely hacked by Commissioner Betters, provided details about how Fettel was raised to become a telepathic military commander, that he was the son of the red-dressed girl, who was described as being a powerful psychic as part of something called Project Origin, and the existence of another child of the girl, who was born before Fettel.

All clues lead F.E.A.R. to believe Fettel was under control of his mother, who was locked in the Origin facility when ATC closed down the project, owing to the danger the woman posed. Fettel was searching for that same facility to free his mother. Point Man found his way to the abandoned structure, fighting back both the clone soldiers and ATC guards, who had received orders to cover up the whole affair. When Point Man came to finally face Fettel, he was drawn into a hallucination where Point Man learned he was the girl's first son and is thereafter enabled to put a bullet in Fettel's head. Point Man's nightmare did not end here, however, as the girl was nonetheless freed when her storage chamber was opened by ATC researcher and leader of Project Origin, Harlan Wade, who felt guilty over the company's treatment of the girl and who actually was her father. Point Man had then been called to sabotage the structure's reactor, forcing him to run a gauntlet against the girl's ghosts before the whole location exploded. In the aftermath of the detonation, a Delta Force Black Hawk helicopter extracted Point Man from the rubble, rescuing him. While Point Man and the survivors of the F.E.A.R team surveyed the results of the explosion from the helicopter, the girl made one last sudden appearance over the side of the helicopter, preparing to pull herself up into the cabin: the destruction of the Origin facility had not stopped her quest for revenge.

Later on, it is discovered that Point Man had listened to a phone call between a mysterious senator and ATC president Aristide, which offered some further explanation: She considered the project under control and deemed the "first prototype" a success.

The Mother's name was Alma.

One month later, a Replica by the name of Foxtrot 813 was sent to find Paxton Fettel and free his spirit from the psychic amplifier. Foxtrot was guided by Paxton Fettel to turn on his fellow Replica and tried to reach the epicentre of the nuclear blast triggered by the Point Man's failed attempt to contain Alma. It was evident that Alma did not want the rogue Replica soldier to reach his and Paxton's goal, and she proceeded to try to defeat Foxtrot with Replica still under her control, and the strange ghost-like beings she had implemented. When Foxtrot reached the original blast site, and proceeded deep under the rubble, Fettel made reference to other soldiers that would be his, and Foxtrot's army. They could be seen as ghosts, but unlike those used by Alma. When Foxtrot used the slo-mo ability, they became visible as Replica soldiers not unlike the Foxtrot himself. They were marching ceaselessly towards a large, red beam that appeared to be Fettel and Foxtrot's destination. After fighting a few more of Alma's ghosts, Foxtrot opened a door to find Fettel, kneeling in the middle of the room. Fettel welcomed Foxtrot as "brother" and reached out for him. As he touched Foxtrot, Fettel melted away. After he disappeared completely, Foxtrot removed his helmet to reveal Fettel's face, as Fettel's voice narrated that he had been reborn.

The nightmare continues when the supernatural being, Alma, whose rage against those who wronged her caused an escalating paranormal crisis that threatened to devour and replace reality with her own. This focuses down to Michael Becket, a Delta Force operator whose squad was sent in to take Genevieve Aristide into protective custody approximately thirty minutes before Alma escaped.

Becket experienced a hallucination involving a ruined city, where he saw Alma walking along. As he recovered, Becket's squad arrived at the penthouse complex where Aristide lived, only to find it under assault by a team from ATC Security's Black Ops, dispatched by Armacham Technology Corporation's Board of Directors. After saving Aristide, Becket uncovered hints of a project known as "Harbinger", which involved himself and several of his teammates. Aristide claimed that Becket and his team were the only way to stop Alma, but before she could elaborate, Point Man detonated the Origin Facility's reactor, knocking Becket unconscious in the explosion.

When he recovered, Becket found himself and the rest of his squad in a hospital deep underground, being operated on by a team of doctors under the direction of Aristide. The hospital came under attack by ATC clean-up crews led by Colonel Vanek, and Becket had no choice but to fight his way out. While escaping, Becket received communications over his radio from a man who called himself "Snake Fist". After escaping the hospital and confronting the commander of the ATC forces, Becket fought his way to the surface, where he encountered the reactivated Replica troops. As he moved to the surface, Becket was repeatedly assaulted in hand-to-hand combat by Alma, who (according to Snake Fist) was trying to "absorb" Becket, drawn by the psychic signal he had emitted after being psychically altered in an "attunement chamber" that Aristide tricked him into entering.

After reaching the surface, Becket regrouped with what was left of his team, many of whom had been systematically killed by Alma. His team then consisting only of Becket, his superior Lieutenant Stokes, Sergeant Morales, and Sergeant First Class Keegan, the squad moved to nearby Wade Elementary, a school controlled by ATC Security, where Snake Fist and Aristide were hiding. Becket discovered that the basement of the school was another ATC research facility, for a project known as "Paragon." Here, Becket discovered that Project Harbinger was an attempt to create more psychic commanders similar to Paxton Fettel, and that Michael and Keegan were the most promising subjects.

In the basement facility, Michael killed Colonel Vanek and found Snake Fist. Snake Fist revealed himself as Terry Halford, a researcher for ATC, and explained that the only way to defeat Alma was to travel to an Armacham facility inside a nuclear reactor on nearby Still Island, which housed a device that would amplify psychic power. With this device, Becket could possibly defeat Alma with his own psychic abilities. As Becket and Halford prepared to head back to the surface, Halford was decapitated by a Replica assassin.

En route to Still Island, Michael's squad was ambushed by Replica troops, and Sergeant Keegan wandered off in a daze. Becket followed and tried to recover Keegan, but was instead delayed by Replica forces. After fighting off both the enemy soldiers and more of Alma's assaults, he eventually reunited with the remainder of the squad underneath Still Island and headed for the ATC facility. Becket entered the psychic amplifier, and as Stokes prepared to power up the machine, she was killed by Genevieve Aristide. Aristide explained that instead of destroying Alma, she planed to seal Becket and Alma inside the device together, so Aristide could use Alma as leverage against ATC.

Alma attacked again, and Aristide sealed Becket and Alma together. Alma approached Becket, and he was sent into another hallucination, where he fought off apparitions of a maddened Sergeant Keegan. While trying to reactivate the amplifier, Becket saw images of Alma, who appeared to be crudely assaulting his body in the real world. Finally, after reactivating the last switch, Becket escaped the hallucination to find himself sealed inside the device. The device opened, and Becket found Alma standing in the midst of a blasted landscape. Alma was now pregnant with Michael's child, and as she walked up to Michael and placed his hand onto her stomach, the voice of a child saying "Mommy" could be distinctly heard.

Finally, Alma had given birth to Point Man and Fettel.

When Point Man and Fettel were young, and Fettel still alive, they had been locked up like rats. Set in a laboratory with no more than two small beds with pillows, no sheets. They wore white suits day in and day out, and were controlled, unknowingly, by the scientists watching and recording their every move. While Point Man was just a simple little boy, Fettel had not been for long. He would constantly be taken out of their containment room by Harlan Wade, and returned later, somehow affected. Wade would even enter from time to time to deliver some sort of injection into little Fettel. From the beginning, the corporation had been teaching them to kill. And when they became of age, kill they did. But soon Fettel began to act strange. Speaking of another worldly being, and painting the walls of their containment hold with gruesomely ominous pictures of a creature that resembled Alma.

Nine months after the pregnancy of Alma, Point Man was captured by Armacham Security Personnel, and interrogated in an asylum.

Point Man now found himself in the asylum catacombs under a large city, with two ACT guards cornering him in a room with Point Man on his knees and wrists banded together. As they mercilessly beat him, spitting names at him, the man behind him flinched suddenly. As the first bent down with a knife to taunt Point Man with the blade, the second soldier walked up behind him. His eyes were glowing red, and the first soldier tried to retaliate as the other reached down, and broke his neck with one twist. Point Man's reflexes started up, and he grabbed the knife, slitting the remaining soldier's throat and splattering the cell in blood. At the man's body fell, a red aural being faded from the body.

Fettel.

Now, as the two brothers were reunited, they set out to escape the sewers, awaiting the soldiers and the nightmares their Mother had waiting for her two sons.

End of Prologue - Part 2