The Silent Battle

•Prologue•

In the year 2076, the last of Earth's oil was used up by a final Air Force One flight from London to Washington, D.C. All of the world's oil-everything that fueled the movement of cars, trucks, planes, the fire on the stove cooking your soup-gas, propane- it was all gone in a few short hours.

Fifty years earlier, people were positive that their inventors would figure something out before the "Runout": something else to fuel people's daily commutes to the place which gave them money, which gave them food and all the other things they needed. But they were wrong; people found out the hard way that these inventors were quite the procrastinators.

So, everyone in America waited, trapped in their homes, for their President John Woodman to return. They expected him to share what Britain's idea was for the new fuel system; that was why he'd gone in the first place. But when the president returned, he shared bitter news: Britain had nothing.

People panicked.

Inventors panicked, suggesting that everyone use electric cars and trucks while they figured something else out. Americans reluctantly agreed, while Australians demanded an answer. But no matter what your nation decided, an unanswered question hung in the air: When will they figure something else out?

Five agonizing years later, they did.

As expected, scientists came up with something new and different-they called it kupla (KOO-pluh). It was a thick, see-through purple liquid that could be made by scientists and sold cheap to use as anything oil had to be made into: gasoline, natural gas, propane, etc. It seemed like the perfect answer until the effects on people began showing.

A man was cut by glass in a car accident, and kupla got into the wound. It was only after the man died that scientists began to realize kupla was highly poisonous if it entered the bloodstream, killing the victim in six seconds flat.

Most people simply took caution.

But the RSA (Rebel Society of America), formerly peaceful, took this opportunity to create kupla into the perfect weapon that would wipe out the economy for good: kupla injections.

The government said if the RSA even thought about using the kupla injections in any way, they'd blow the rebel base in New Orleans sky-high. So the RSA told the government they could have the injections and do whatever they wanted with them for $75,000,000. The crooked politicians were greedy and refused the offer.

The RSA knew that the government was serious about blowing up their base, so they kept the kupla injections tucked away safely in the basement. That is, until an undercover government worker (most likely from the CIA, working as a spy) loaded all of the injections up in a giant kupla-powered truck and high-tailed it clear to Lexington, Kentucky before the rebels even knew it was gone. The RSA officials were furious out of their minds. Just before the semi could reach Washington, D.C., the RSA flew an F-16 over and launched a missile right at the kupla truck. Mind you, kupla was, in fact, similar to gasoline, and reacted the same way in this situation.

Tensions between the RSA and the US government had been rising for years. The RSA simply wanted crooked politicians gone, but they were willing to take over America to do so.

They were willing to fight.

That is how the Second Civil War began.