Outbreak

The area known to many as "Outbreak" is a quarantined and sealed-off portion of Paragon City unfit for citizens to live and work in. The area itself is something of a crossroads - a commercial area to the north meets an area of low-income housing to the south. To the east of the apartment buildings, a cluster of high-rise office buildings reach for the sky. This arrangement of districts made the neighborhood a breeding ground for petty crime. These criminals, by and large drug addicts, are now the carriers of a dangerous virus that drives anyone contaminated with it to extreme violence and rebellion.

The criminals of the neighborhood broke into an office building in the high-rise section of the neighborhood and stole a stash of strange drugs that they suspected would give them the ultimate high. They indeed rode on a wave of euphoria for days, and crime temporarily plummeted as they spent days strewn about their crime dens like so many soiled pillows. However, soon enough they began to change. The drugs they had taken from the Crey Industries office were no ordinary drugs. These drugs, rumored to be Rikti mutagens, doubled the strength of the criminals and gave them a sense of invincibility. They began rioting, tearing down their own homes and businesses, all the while ingesting more and more of the drug. By the time the Paragon Police Department became aware of the volatile situation, their eyes were already glowing green and half the neighborhood had been reduced to rubble. SWAT was dispatched and the neighborhood hospital, Riviera Medical Center, began treating the few criminals that had only ingested a small dose of the mutagen. The rest, however, were lost. They would have to be eliminated.

Though the criminals were only armed with rusty handguns and lead pipes, the SWAT was unprepared to deal with their sheer numbers. There was also apprehension as to whether the "hot zone", or the area in which the contamination was present, was safe for ordinary humans. Several broken Rikti Drones were found littered on the streets outside of the hotzone. Crey technicians arrived on the scene and helped the police investigate the matter. In the end, it was decided that though the contaminated criminals were relatively weak, there were simply too much for the police to handle.

Today, the "Outbreak" zone serves as a proving ground for heroes just arriving in Paragon City. Though the neighborhood's business and high-rise areas remain devoid of Contaminated (though eerily empty nonetheless), the former housing area is little more than a glorified junkyard. Now known as the "hot zone", police drones help confine the Contaminated to their old haunt while new heroes venture beyond the chain-link fences to bring the fight to the crazed fiends that riot within. The PPD instructs new heroes on the art of combat while veteran hero Coyote handpicks the best of the new recruits for his investigation. He aims to identify which office building was broken into and if the Contaminated are regularly raiding it for the Rikti mutation drug.