They said Sierra Nova rose from the ashes of a world that collapsed under its own weight, but the truth was darker: the world didn't fall — it was sold.
In 2030, when the global economy collapsed and governments could no longer feed their people, the corporations that remained standing stepped forward as saviors. One by one, nations traded authority for survival. In the aftermath came the rebuilding. Technology pushed to the brink and industry freed from bureaucratic restraint birthed the megacities of the new world. These cities became refuges for the hungry and the downtrodden.
Sierra Nova was one of the brightest of them all. A miracle of glass and steel built at impossible speed on the bones of what came before. It was a promise that humanity could start over—if it followed its new masters. Millions came. From crumbling towns, dying cities, and the rural stretches of nothingness. It wasn't long before the towers touched the clouds and the streets below vanished into a maze of noise and loss.
They called it the City of Second Chances. But they never mentioned how many first chances were sacrificed to get there.
In the beginning there was work for everyone: construction workers, laborers, technicians and all the service industries to keep them all running 24/7. If you had a strong back and a will to work you were needed. But cities were living things, and Sierra Nova had an appetite for humanity that grew hungrier by the day.
Then automation replaced the hands. AI replaced the minds. The corporations discarded the people they no longer needed. The once-essential were left in the shadows of the very streets they helped build.
As the population swelled, housing needs outgrew supply. The shining districts above closed themselves off behind checkpoints and private security. The world between the top and the bottom stretched wide. And the outer districts swelled with all the people the corporations no longer had use for.
On the surface, the city gleamed—beautiful, promising. But beneath that shine, rot festered.
Those who lived there learned to ignore the futility and noise. They drifted through their days, numb to their slow decay. But not all.
This story didn't begin with Sierra Nova's rise, nor with its fall. It began with the people trying to survive in the space between — those who ran, those who fought, and those who tried to build something better before they broke in the shadows.
One of them was a girl named Jinki. And like everyone born beneath Sierra Nova's neon sky, she carried the truth of the city carved into her very soul.