The Final Battle



The Battle at Ground Zero occurred in the dried-up remnants of the Tiber River, the site where the first Tiberium was found on Earth. It involved GDI, Nod and the Scrin. The battle was the final showdown of the Third Tiberium War, and there is speculation that a liquid Tiberium bomb was used. The remaining forces of Nod appeared there to prevent the thwarting of Kane's plans by GDI, while the Scrin were protecting their Relay Node. GDI claimed victory, driving the Scrin off-world, although they were unable to completely halt the plans of the Brotherhood.

Background
By this point in the war, GDI and Nod had both driven deep into the Italian Red zone. The main objective of GDI was to stop the construction of the Scrin's Threshold towers, while Nod was concentrating on capturing one for themselves. GDI's best battle commander had successfully destroyed a threshold in Rome, and other GDI commanders managed to follow that example. Soon, only one tower, in what used to be the Mediterranean, was left standing.

The Commander was redirected to Ground Zero, where Lt. Sandra Telfair of InOps revealed Futuretech Labs' latest breakthrough; all alien units were recieving some sort of Tiberium radiation from the Relay Node at Ground Zero. Shortly thereafter, the Commander was contacted by Director Redmond Boyle, who was holed up in Reykjavik. Boyle claimed that a conventional attack against the relay node would be a useless gesture, instead, Boyle revealed that he had commissioned a Liquid Tiberium Bomb from materials confiscated from Sarajevo. Boyle was convinced that the bomb would be the only way to achieve victory, and that Lt. General Granger would oppose this simply due to politcal disagreements with Boyle. With this knowledge, the Commander began his mission...

The Opposition
The Commander faced opposition not only from the Scrin, desperate to save themselves, but from Nod. The Nod forces at Ground Zero were likely deployed to ensure the survival of the Scrin long enough for the final Threshold to be completed. Both enemy armies were large, and the odds were certainly against the Commander.

The Battle
GDI faced not only large armies of Nod and Scrin units, but also their weapons of mass destruction. Nod fielded a nuclear-equipped Temple of Nod, while the Scrin had both a Rift Generator and a Mothership in the vicinity. The commander also expects enemies using Catalyst missiles and even more stasis shields on his men.

However, despite the common cause of the Nod and Scrin forces, they were not united. The commander managed to play this to his advantage. By destroying the disruption towers cloaking the Nod base, the Mothership was diverted to fight the Brotherhood. Meanwhile, GDI also managed to hijack another enemy superweapon.

The commander then recieved a pair of transmissions from the two GDI leaders whose power struggle he had witnessed since the war's start. General Granger had found out about Boyle's plan, and reminded the commander that a liquid Tiberium explosion in the world's largest Red Zone would be even more cataclysmic than the Sarajevo Explosion. Also, Granger was emphatic that using the bomb would make GDI dependent upon Tiberium, an extremely dangerous precedent. Boyle responded by pointing out that it was their duty to the GDI public to end the invasion as quickly as possible. The commander would fail every living human if he did not use every available resource. The liquid Tiberium bomb was then made available for use...

Aftermath
Once the Relay Node was destroyed, Scrin Units worldwide fell to pieces. GDI had secured victory over an enemy unlike anything they had ever faced. Nod had managed to hold the Tower in the Mediterranean, but InOps was convinced that it was completely harmless.