The Gaps Between Factions

Six months after the Collapse, the city-states had found their shape.

There were four major factions: the Hegemony (three mega-corps acting in concert), the Free Ports (six self-governing coastal cities), the Remnants (former national militaries acting without national governments), and the Enclaves (sealed communities trying to wait it out).

Dax operated in the gaps between all of them, which was lonely but survivable.

His current contract: extract a Hegemony data archivist named Petra Lund who had decided she wanted out. Payment: six months' supply credit and one unredacted Collapse investigation file.

He found her in the basement of a Hegemony processing station outside Nagoya, sitting in a chair with a data crown on her head, cataloguing confiscated memory chips.

She looked up when he dropped through the ceiling.

"You're late," she said.

"How did you know someone was coming?"

"I filed the extraction request eight weeks ago." She stood, removed the crown, and tucked it into her coat. "I was starting to think the Free Ports had forgotten about me."

"They almost did," Dax admitted. "I'm the third attempt."