RED Team Specialist

Aug 26, 2017

With this Nexus story I was trying to establish the difference between a standard RED team member and one of the Specialists. Not only their responsibilities in the field but also the effects it has on them back home.

I'm part of a Homeline RED team. RED stands for Retrieval, Exploration, and Diplomacy. Basically, we're sent in when Homeline doesn't really know what's going on on the other side of a gate. Whether that's because it's a new world, or they lost a team, or something else, doesn't matter.

Generally speaking RED teams are made up of people who aren't from Homeline's reality. They say it's because the diverse teams bring unique skills to the table. Other's say it's Homeline sending others on suicide missions. Personally, I think its just affirmative action and propaganda. "If they see their people working for us, they'll know we're alright."

In truth though, I like my job. In my world, I was a big game hunter, wealthy from old family money so didn't have to work. Then the dead rose. Wiped out most of the people before the Centrum science team stumbled upon our world. Wasn't the first active apocalypse they'd heard of, so they rallied Centrum's teams and pulled as much of the living population out that they could. All told, there was about a hundred thousand of us left scattered across the world.

Once I got settled in Nexus, I got a job with Homeline to pay off my Centrum debt. Hah! You thought they pulled us out for free? No sir, we have to pay off our saviours. Course, Homeline does the same, that's part of the Diplomacy in RED.

Anyway, where was I? Right, got a job on a RED team. They recognized my skills with firearms, and assessed that I didn't have any particular psychological issues with the walking dead. I kept getting sent into dead heavy worlds, but not always with the best intel. Sometimes the dead, weren't like the ones from my world. Nothing scarier than being bitten, but the relief at finding out that they're magical and not contagious in the least will stop your heart almost as fast.

15 years I've been doing this. I'm now the go to guy for RED teams dealing with the dead. I've handled everything from skeletons, to frankensteins, to edwards. I'm classified as a specialist now, I only get sent into worlds with undead. Good in some ways, I don't work too much, leaves time for my family. Other days it's rough.

I stopped going to market because I get twitchy when I spot a dead man, even one approved by my employers. I know that sounds racist, but I don't hate them, I've just been treated for vampirism one too many times. Besides, even if I did hate them, this city is so full of bile and racism, no one would blink at an undead hunter hating them.