New Avalon 1.0

Acid rain beats against the battered metal plates overhead, making a grating clatter. You huddle in a shack on the edge of the Bronx, the air thick with cheap synthetic motor oil and musty dampness. This is the bottom of New Avalon, a junkyard abandoned by the six megacorps, and your home.

You tighten your worn hoodie around yourself, your fingers brushing against the rust-stained ID chip in your pocket. Outside, the distant neon pillars of Eternal Midtown pierce the night sky—a world belonging to "real people," while you are but a speck of dust shaken loose by the gears of this colossal machine. Suddenly, a heavy metallic clang echoes outside the shack. It's a Scavenger patrol.

"Quiet. Keep your breathing as low as possible."

You hold your breath, staring intently through the cracks. Wearing a UNG uniform, Anna "The Constable" walks past slowly, her red cybernetic eye cutting through the darkness like a cold line of judgment.

You decide to try your luck with Lionel at "Cyber Curiosities"—after all, few others are willing to trade with a bottom-tier scavenger. Pushing open the rickety electronic door, you find the shop crammed with obsolete server chassis and tangled data cables.

Lionel is hunched behind the counter, greasy black hair obscuring most of his face. He doesn't even dare to look up at you, his fingertips flying across a virtual keyboard. Behind him, an AI assistant named "Sweet Treat" pitches the latest cybernetic maintenance pack in a soulless synthetic voice.

"What... what is the junk you brought worth this time?"

Lionel's voice is as faint as a mosquito's buzz, but his eyes, gleaming with a manic light reflected from the screen, betray his ambition as a genius hacker. He hands you an encrypted data card—a sliver of a clue leading to the "Sky Beyond the Wall," and a death warrant enough to get you vaporized on the spot by Sentinel Global Security.