4A

4A was a crypto-terrorist shadow organization that was active in the years leading up to World War 3. Their crimes (including hacking, grand theft, and murder) spanned the entire globe, and, coupled with the onset of the war, culminated in a drastic shift within the major power spheres. It was truly a new world. Although they more-or-less disappeared from the world in the early years of the war, they were nevertheless pursued by every facet of nearly every law enforcement agency on Earth. None of their members, or anyone involved whatsoever, were ever caught, and to the present day, nothing more is known about them than was when they were active.

The ability of the group to do what it did without even an ounce of exposure has been the topic of conversations among a plethora of professionals, from programmers and cryptograhpers to law enforcement officials and militiamen, for decades. To this day they remain an enigma; held in high regard by the oppressed, and cursed to hell by the wicked and powerful.

President of INTERPOL, Gerard Mohr(2024 - 2028), on 4A: *"Vast fortunes were spent, more than any in history, to bring to justice anyone involved with 4A. But we knew nothing about them, except for the aftermath. Nothing about them ever surfaced, period. Nothing. This of course brought more funds into the fray, to the point where our coffers were overflowing. INTERPOL became much too powerful, really. A lot of organizations did. In hindsight. Now, the very types who seemed to be 4A's key targets were the ones responsible for that. They were afraid, and for good reason. It was becoming quite apparent that this was a situation in which we had no control, where none of our extensive operations turned up a single shred of valuable information. Completely helpless, despite trillions of dollars and personal armies, the top-brass of the civilized world fell to knives from within the shadows. To speak of 4A's methods, their results, their discernible patterns--it compelled continual curiosity, if you will. It was almost artistic, what they did. Targets, once slain, were left in public, usually in the streets outside their homes or places associated with them. Not massacred and left to stain the ground with blood. No, they were always found in body bags. Dark blue, very dark blue, body bags--that seemed manufactured en mass, with a light blue "4A" logo on them. Also listed on the outside were the apparent "crimes" of the victims. Oh, and it was always written in calligraphy, a very old-world style font. This was perhaps our only real lead--aside from manufacturers of the material the bags were made of--which turned up nothing. No forensic evidence was ever left behind at the scenes. Every person born in the last one-hundred years who had studied calligraphy at any learning institution on Earth was checked out. And of course, this also led to nothing. Eventually, our fine-toothed comb was retired as it was apparent that the money we were wasting would be better spent on the war that was just over the horizon. It wasn't that long after my tenure was up that China detonated a nuke off the coast of San Francisco; from here our attention was on international affairs. As for 4A, they just seemed to disappear."*

In early 2083, the journals of a recently-deceased elderly man named Geoffrey Belzer were found wherein he admits explicitly to having been a founding member of 4A named Zane Zappa.