My life fades. The vision dims. All that remains are memories. I remember a time of chaos. Ruined dreams. This wasted land. But most of all, I remember Waratah. The man we called "Barnes". To understand who he was, you have to go back to another time. When the world was powered by the black fuel. And the desert sprouted great cities of pipe and steel. Gone now, swept away. For reasons long forgotten, two mighty warrior tribes went to war and touched off a blaze which engulfed them all. Without fuel, they were nothing. They built a house of straw. The thundering machines sputtered and stopped. Their leaders talked and talked and talked. But nothing could stem the avalanche. Their world crumbled. The cities exploded. A whirlwind of looting, a firestorm of fear. Men began to feed on men. In the Edge Worlds it was a white line nightmare. Only those mobile enough to scavenge, brutal enough to pillage would survive. The gangs took over the Freeports, ready to wage war for a tank of H-Fuel. And in this maelstrom of decay, ordinary men were battered and smashed. Men like Barnes. The warrior Barnes. In the roar of an engine, he lost everything. And became a shell of a man, a burnt out, desolate man, a man haunted by the demons of his past, a man who wandered out into the Edge Worlds. And it was here, in this blighted place, that he learned to live again...
