In many ways the situation the Unchanged found themselves facing was indefensible. This conflict wasn’t faction versus faction or army against army; it was individual versus individual, more than six billion armies of one. Beyond that, the Hate didn’t care who you were, where you were, or what you were. You were simply on one side or the other, your position in this new, twisted, fucked-up world decided without your involvement by unknown variables and fate. Within weeks command structures at every level were compromised. Organizations fell apart. Families crumbled. The Haters were everywhere and everyone, the whole world beaten up from the inside out.

The ratio of Unchanged to Haters was generally thought to have settled somewhere between 2:1 and 3:1. In spite of their enemy’s ferocity and apparently insatiable bloodlust, their greater numbers and preexistence gave the Unchanged an early advantage that was quickly squandered. With no time or inclination to look for a cure (could the condition even be reversed?), separation and eradication soon became the only viable option for survival. Conveniently ignoring lessons learned through history and any moral arguments, a halfhearted attempt to cull the Haters failed dramatically. Almost overnight the Unchanged plan of attack was forced to become a plan of defense, and their first priority was to make their people defendable. Civilians were herded together, major city centers quickly becoming swollen, overcrowded, undersupplied, understaffed refugee camps. Once they’d successfully separated “us” from “them,” the Unchanged theory went, they’d head back out into the wastelands and hunt the fuckers out.