Tokyo, March 2027
The city burned in patches.
Not the apocalyptic inferno Jax had left behind in Chicago, nor the surgical firebombing that had erased the Paris facility. Tokyo’s wounds were older, uglier.riots that had started over food prices six months ago and never quite stopped. Whole blocks in Shinjuku had been abandoned to squatters and gangs. Neon still flickered, but half the signs were dead. The air tasted of ozone, smoke, and the copper tang that never quite left Jax’s tongue since the forty-ninth death.
He stood on the roof of a derelict love hotel in Kabukicho, watching the street twenty-three floors below. Rain fell in sheets, turning the gutters into black mirrors that reflected the red lanterns and the muzzle flashes of another distant firefight. Somewhere down there, Ke
