Hey there Reader! Yes, you! I'm the author of this story... just call me J.

I thought I'd write this to give a little insight and update you on how things are going with the story, so here we go.

Introduction

So far it's still the opening months of the war and the world is in chaos and confusion about what's going on. I'm sure you've made connections to the importance of the first chapter and the arrival of the mind-control pathogen.  

Special Forces pre-Hawaii

Right so, everyone read the Hawaii chapter, right? And knows what happened after it. Well before that, Jonathon Mclaw and Roy Hunt were evacuating important figures like the scientists seen in 'Act 1 Chapter 3 The Sniper'. This was where Hunt claims to have acquired the knowledge of the pathogen and the whole reason Mclaw was taken into custody. They also met several other members of what will become this black operations team, still deciding on a name though. Originally it was supposed to be British Black Operations, that was what was in my original story which took place after the war. If you're reading this on Wattpad the original is on my profile, it sort of contains spoilers for this book, but if you're on Webnovel or Scribble Hub it won't be there because it's extremely unpolished and the characters feel slightly off.

Based off

I'm not sure if you noticed but many characters and events are based on certain people or wartime legends or operations, this is a small list of all I remember:

- Lian Walters: literally any businessman, in conversations I've said he's more like Elon Musk and before you ask, I have nothing against Musk. His persona just came round as a fit for Walters before he created the Oceanic Empire, or as it's more commonly known, the NZA.

- Arctic Ghost: This one's obvious, the Ukrainian legend, the Ghost of Kyiv. Needs no introduction, everyone's seen the DCS footage and heard the rumours.

-  Private First Class Zeller: If you've seen that incredible animation on YouTube, you'd instantly recognise who Zeller is based on. The animation is called Crimson Alpine, I didn't make it but I'll put the video link here, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZSkFLJx4fE . Incredible video, incredible animation, would recommend watching, 100%. I know in the video she uses an AX50 instead of the Hecate II but I don't care.

-  1st Division Servorum Army, 'Dead Men': This is inspired by the Russian Soldiers of World War 1 who survived a gas attack to fend off the Germans in 1915. In the end, the Russian soldiers took their objective but were forced to retreat as the Germans attempted to surround and isolate them from command. This was called 'The Attack Of The Dead Men,' and yes I was listening to Sabaton when I came up with the idea for the chapter. However, that doesn't mean Jonathon Mclaw was from the equivalent of Russia in his previous world, how the two units got their name is very different, but I'll discuss that more in the next author's note in a bit.

- Operation Empire was inspired by Operation Mikado in the Falklands War. Originally it failed before it even started with the scouting mission going horribly wrong and the operation being cancelled. This would have taken place several days after Mclaw's team landed and hit their targets and the reason it didn't fail in this timeline was that they weren't attempting to enter through C130s and the military base was different. Probably. I couldn't find hard evidence of where the actual base was so I just took a nearby international airport where I thought the attack could have happened.

- Jonathon Mclaw: Well, Mclaw is his own unique character with a long backstory spanning two different worlds. But during the early stages of designing Mclaw's character, in the original series which took place after the war, I believe his inspiration came from people like Captain Price from the Modern Warfare series. Back then Mclaw was quite a one-dimensional character, the thought of him being the King only came to mind after serious thought of how I can make this character interesting by being the mentor of James Thompson, who was the other main character. You'll meet a more refined version of him soon... 

Going Forward

In the future, I have big plans for this universe... very big plans. If any of you read the extra chapters in my other series you'd know what event we are approaching. I won't spoil it... but we are very close.

Finally

Right so, keeping this short I'm gonna end this extra chapter and let you get on with reading, you may not even see this! I just wanted to give you readers a small update and clear up some plot points.

I'll be doing this type of thing like every ten chapters or so if I want to talk to you lot about something.

Anyway... I've been rambling... If you got this far, thanks...

See ya in the next chapter!

-J