2173

The year is 2173, and the world is perfect. Or so the sensors say.
Humanity has fought back from the great climate collapse and nuclear outbreaks of the 21st century with a world powered by “artificial sun” fusion reactors. But this power has a price. From the gleaming spires of the three SuperBlocs, the elite descendants of the Founding Houses rule eight billion souls through Sentinel - a planetary AI that monitors every heartbeat and predicts every treasonous thought before it’s even formed.

For a century, compliance has been absolute. The metrics are green. The cage is locked.

But beyond the reach of the Neural Identity Tokens, in the lawless shadows of the unchipped Deadlands, the silence is breaking. And a whisper is moving through the archives, a ghost in the machine that Sentinel cannot comprehend.
The Founding Houses sleep in shielded luxury, certain that history has ended. They are wrong. As the clocks sync, the algorithms spin and the reactors hum, a ghost in the machine is waking.
There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.