Prototype

This is the way the world ends—
Not with a bang, but with a bargain.

Two centuries after the bombs fell, the earth is still breathing in ash. Nations shattered, cities became fortresses, and the world rebuilt itself atop the bones of the old one. In the glass towers of Antipolis, power wears silk and speaks in contracts. In the Red Zone—the black-market underbelly of the undercity—power hides behind masks, neon, and the kind of deals that can’t be undone.

They say the Wasteland Ghost is just a story. A whisper traded in the smoke-filled corners of Vertica Lounge, where masked patrons drink to forget and vanish into shadows. But Deirdre Rycke —1V3RA, the last surviving MK-1 prototype from the Cybernetic Assassin Project—is very real. She’s a relic of a time when children were shaped into weapons, bones reinforced with steel, minds rewired for obedience. She slipped the leash before the New World Syndicate could finish molding her—and for seven years, they’ve been trying to get her back.

Now, Silver Division wants her first. The military unit knows the New World Syndicate is trying to restart C.A.P., creating a new generation of mindless cyber-assassins. They want Deirdre’s help to stop them. She says no—until an attack on her life forces her hand and pulls her into an uneasy alliance with the team: Maverick, the smooth-talking tactician; Marz, a hacker with hands in every datastream; and Zero, a silent enforcer whose conditioning is more dangerous than his enemies.

From the industrial choke of the Upper Levels to the looming steel fortress of the New World Syndicate HQ —a capitol in the clouds where authoritarian monsters hide behind glass and iron—they chase their enemies through abandoned labs, coded drop sites, and the blood-soaked ruins of old experiments. Along the way, Deirdre uncovers the truth about the project that made her, the future the New World Syndicate is building, and the ghosts that refuse to stay buried.

In the end, the mission costs lives, shatters Silver Division, and leaves the New World Syndicate wounded—but far from dead. And Deirdre, once a weapon, once a fugitive, chooses to become something far more dangerous.

Because the world may have ended, but the game never did. And she’s done playing by their rules.