Transgenics
Transgenics are the product of a covert government experiment to create the ultimate fighting force under the name of the 'Manticore Project".*

Originally located outside of Gillette, Wyoming; Project Manticore smoothly ran it's DNA labs and training facilities under the guise of beng a Strategic Air Force Base.

Manticore's first success was a transhuman who was given the name of Joshua. Joshua possessed too much canine DNA to pass for human, but the point was that he managed to survive outside the womb, possessed no deformities, and continued to grow stronger and healthier with age. 

As the years progressed, Manticore created a range of transgenics to suit a variety of different climates, environments and purposes Some were built merely to dig trenches (whether these were in fact 'defective' transgenics who were intelligent enough to at least be given simple tasks, it's unsure), some were designed with gills for amphibious sabotage, some were created with telepathic abilities such as telecoercion, for use in reindoctrination or on political prisoners.  

And then they came to the X5 class. With a tiny percentage of animal DNA in their genetic make up, these creatures were capable of a strength and agility no mere human had ever been able to match. Each one was a genius. Each one was capable of killing a full grown man at an age where most children were still learning how to spell simple words. And each one was as human in appearance as you and I.

The X5 class were under the charge of Colonel Lydecker who was responsible for overseeing their training to become the perfect military weapon. Raised without love or compassion, these children knew only that if they failed to be anything less than a shining example of Manticore's success, they would be regarded as defects and taken away to be dissected and examined, or to the basement where they would live with the other anomolies who had failed to make their grade.

Project Manticore's success was brought to it's knees in February of 2009, when 12 of the X5-series escaped. Too skilled in evasive manouvers for the TAC teams to catch, these soldier-children made their way into the world that existed outside of Manticore, seeking a freedom they would never truly find. How could they truly be free when each day was spent looking over their shoulders, knowing if they ever stopped running, Manticore would bring them back in?

After this damning breech in Manticore's security (and secrecy), the Wyoming base was shut down and the base's inhabitants were transferred to a second Manticore base outside of Seattle. Colonel Lydecker was now put in charge of recovering the 12 rebel transgenics. The leashes were tightened upon the transgenics who remained behind, after the higher powers in charge of Manticore realised their efforts to stifle human sentiment within their machine-like soldiers, had failed. The twins of the escapees were put through rigorous tests in effort to discover any genetic problem that may have been the cause of the 12 traitors to develop minds of their own and escape. Months of reindoctrine and reprogramming, and even then, the bad history of their rebel twins left an everlasting stain upon their own records.

Despite the escape of '09 and the electromagnetic-pulse attack by terrorists a couple of years later which wiped out all of America's power grids and caused its economy to collapse, Manticore ran like a well-oiled machine; deploying soldiers on covert both overseas missions (including the operation which brought down Saddam Hussein) and within it's own country, and providing America with it's secret weapon which no other country had yet been able to crack.

Until May of 2020 when a team of four '09 escapees infiltrated the DNA lab and auxiliary generator, and burnt it to the ground, forcing Manticore to move its facility 30 miles north of Seattle, Washington, where it then existed under the cover of being a Verterans Administration hospital. 

Manticore was destroyed once and for all when in September of 2020, the true identity of the Vet hospital was revealed by cyber-journalist and freedom-fighter, Eyes Only.  This in turn forced Director Renfro to cauterize Manticore in the hope of destroying all evidence of its existance - including the transgenics trapped within their barracks.

However, one transgenic, an '09 escapee by the designation of X5-452 who had been recaptured only three months earlier, released most of the transgenics from what would have been their pyres, allowing them the freedom they had never asked for.

A specialist team headed by Special Agent Ames White was sent in by the NSA to gather up the transgenics and finish the job of eliminating them, but having trained in Evade and Escape techniques since childhood, most of the Manticore soldiers managed to go to ground and out-manouver all efforts for their capture.

*According to CJ Sandeman (son of the scientist responsible for founding Project Manticore) the transgenics were originally created not to be covert US soldiers, but to be a new improved race of Familiars (a race of human beings selectively bred over thousands of years to possess all the capablilities of the transgenics -and more). Professor Sandeman's original plans for the transgenics went askew when the leaders of his breeding cult turned against him, calling his scientic experiments into genetic engineering a "heresy". Details on this are vague and unconfirmed, but it appeared that soon after his excommunication from the breeding cult, Sandeman abandoned Manticore and went underground, and the US goverment then stepped in and took over (or perhaps Sandeman left his creations in the care of the government, planning to come back to them at a later date?)

A summary of the special abilities of the X5 class:

Information from The Broken World & Topps Dark Angel cards.

Fanlistings
This is the tfl.org-approved fanlisting for the transgenics of Dark Angel. A fanlisting is a list of people from around the world who are fans of a particular subject. For more information about what a fanlisting is go here.

Site
This fanlisting was created and maintained by Sorrow using Photoshop and Notepad. The screencaps used in the site graphic were made by Designation and are available at The Broken World's gallery.

Site design copyright to Sorrow.