Civil war ravishes the country. The economy collapses. A plague spreads like fire, and pollution darkens the sky. This is the toxic world of Robert Ashton. A wasteland of broken dreams, death, tech, and mutants. But he is not alone.

He and his partner navigate life underground, where it is safer. Society has buckled, and working as a smuggler, Robert builds a criminal life to keep the two of them fed. But nothing lasts forever, and he is forced to return to the surface when the underground suffers a brutal military raid. What he discovers shocks a man who thinks he cannot be shocked anymore.

He emerges into the hellscape of the Third World War...