Welcome to Repubblica.
It’s 2076 in New York City and a new day is dawning. Unfortunately for Tom Burke, it’s the same as every other day. Life in the city has never been tougher, unless you live in Empire City, the massive, sprawling pryamids build in the center of Manhattan Island. In a dangerous world, they’re the safest place to be, or so the ads proclaim.
Tom’s just another of the ragged millions trying to shuffle by in the Old City. But he’s good at one thing: Hell, the 3-D virtual reality game that’s played in the streets and parks of Empire City.
It’s a scourge to most residents, this videogame that sends the kids running like mad through the streets, but it’s got one powerful advocate: Derrick Holt, scion of the Holt family, son of Jacob Holt and eventual – everybody knows it – mayor of the city and head of the family. And the Holts aren’t any family; they’re the most powerful family on the eastern seaboard and one that’s been building to this moment: when they could extend their reach past New York, through Philadelphia and Baltimore, and into Washington, DC.
You see, the nation hasn’t been itself since the Great Unwind of 2034.
