This excerpt comes from the novel Crysis: Legion by Peter Watts, with preliminary material identifying the publisher as Del Rey, an imprint of Random House. The Editor’s Note establishes the narrative as derived from anonymous voice recordings and technical reports concerning events in Manhattan, noting the intense corporate and political opposition to its publication, including threats of legal action. The story unfolds as a highly detailed, first-person account of a soldier (later identified as Alcatraz/Patient A) wearing the advanced Nanosuit 2.0 during a brutal alien invasion (the Ceph Incursion), focusing heavily on the suit's unexpected neurocognitive integration with the wearer and the discovery that the suit itself is based on pirated alien technology. The protagonist engages in desperate urban combat against both the alien Ceph and human paramilitary forces (CELL) while undertaking a critical mission to deploy a viral countermeasure—the Tunguska Iteration—against the Ceph's mind-altering spore.

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“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.