The city of NeoNexus never truly slept. It pulsed like a living organism, its veins lit by the relentless hum of neon, its heart powered by the endless flow of data and currency. Above, the glittering towers reached toward the sky, home to the corporate elite—those who bent the world to their will with the flick of a wrist, commanding fortunes and armies from glass-walled fortresses. Up there, life was clean, pristine, wrapped in chrome and luxury. But far below, beneath the shadows of those towering spires, lay the Slums.

Before the fall of countless cities, before the unraveling of the United States itself, there was hope. But World War III shattered that hope with the deadly flash of nuclear detonations, reducing much of the East and West coasts to radioactive wastelands. Once-thriving metropolises were turned to ash, and fertile lands became barren, poisoned beyond recovery. The fields where crops had grown and livestock had grazed were left scorched and desolate, unfit for even the hardiest life to reclaim.

With the coasts lost to nuclear fallout and no future in sight, survivors fled inland, seeking refuge in the Midwest—the last stretch of the country that the war’s destructive reach hadn’t touched. Entire cities were uprooted, people pouring into the heartland, desperate to carve out new lives among the ruins of the old. Yet, even here, the scars of the war lingered, and the promise of starting anew was shadowed by uncertainty as the remnants of civilization struggled to rebuild in a world that had little extra space to share and give, but amenities and necessities were equally hard to come by unless you were more wealthy.

The corporate conflicts that tore through neighboring cities sent waves of desperate refugees flooding into NeoNexus. As powerful conglomerates battled for dominance, crushing smaller competitors, they didn’t just destroy businesses—they obliterated any chance of independence for those trying to survive outside corporate rule. Over the course of a century, what began as chaos settled into a twisted sense of normalcy. Scraps and salvage became the lifeblood of daily life, with mechanics and cybernetic enhancements becoming as common as food and water. Cyborg prosthetics, internal computers, and specialized scans were no longer luxuries but necessities in a world where survival depended on technological integration.

Under the corporate reign, NeoNexus had effectively become an oligarchy state, though not by choice. The ruling corporations controlled every aspect of life, regulating resources, technology, and even the citizens themselves to a degree. Socialism and democracy, once a distant ideal, had long since been buried, and yet, for many living in the shadow of corporate tyranny, the poverty of the present made them long for the promises of the past. The people of NeoNexus, now fully enmeshed in the digital web of their corporate overlords, quietly wished for something more—some faint echo of a time when their lives were their own.

The district once known as Serene Falls has long since been swallowed by time and decay. As prices soared, this former middle-class enclave near the entertainment district was one of the first places NeoNexus leadership chose to abandon. Starved of funding, it became a casualty of corporate mergers that blurred the line between governance and greed. With no resources to sustain it, Serene Falls withered, suffocated by poverty, crime, and neglect. What had once been a thriving suburb was soon transformed by unchecked inflation into what is now simply called The Slums.

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Struggling to contain the growing chaos, NeoNexus eventually walled itself off, functioning as an isolated, self-contained city-state. Behind those walls, Serene Falls fell into ruin—a forgotten relic in a city that no longer cared. To maintain appearances, a thin veil of law enforcement patrolled its streets, but most were corrupt, working for the powerful elite behind closed doors. The Slums became a breeding ground for desperation, a dark shadow lurking within NeoNexus, a haunting reminder of what the city had sacrificed in its relentless pursuit of profit and control.

In the wake of this abandonment, the Slums were born. Once-pristine towers turned to crumbling ruins, and the artificial waterfall ran dry. Families crowded into what had once been luxurious apartments, scraping by on whatever they could scavenge. Crime thrived in the cracks, and gangs carved out territories in the alleys and backstreets. The old laws didn’t reach this far down—here, survival itself was the only law.

The corporations that ruled NeoNexus were content to let the Slums rot, viewing it as a place of exile, reserved for the unlucky and the unwanted. But within the decay, the people of the Slums had forged their own brutal existence. Black markets flourished, underground tech hubs buzzed with makeshift machinery, street docs peddled cybernetic enhancements, and data runners navigated the digital arteries of the city. In the Slums, life persisted—harsh and unrelenting, but life nonetheless, forged from the ruins left behind by a city that had turned its back.

Rhett Kervyn lived two lives, both dangerous and relentless. By day, he was a private investigator for Virtu, one of the largest and most powerful corporations in NeoNexus. But by night, he became Ryker—a name whispered in the shadows, known only to those who operated in the city's darkest corners. As Ryker, he navigated the criminal underworld with cold precision, trading data and secrets on the black market, far from the corporate leash that bound him during the day.

Ryker wasn’t just a name—it was a shield, an identity that allowed him to slip into the shadows, unseen and untouchable. In the Slums, who you were didn’t matter, only what you could do to survive. And Ryker had perfected the art of survival. He moved like a ghost through the underworld, untethered and unseen, trading on reputation alone. In this place, where life was cheap and danger constant, reputation meant everything, but names meant nothing. Only the strong, the smart, and the ruthless made it through—and Ryker was all three.

For those at the bottom, NeoNexus wasn’t a shining metropolis of the future. It was a labyrinth of decay, where the line between man and machine blurred into a cruel, metallic haze. Here, dreams were sold in the form of designer drugs and black-market augmentations. Hope was a currency that only the desperate traded in.

And in the Slums, everyone was desperate.