Nickel Bet

The world had taken over a century to climb back from the breakup of the old Super Powers. The vile smudge of nuclear contamination still glowed in the black nights here and there around the globe. Now a growing movement had emerged, seeking to establish a United Earth. Harvey had known nothing but brutality and hardship. While serving a year in prison, he watched events unfold with alarm. The grasping for power would lead to a second holocaust, for who wouldn't want to be Emperor of the planet. He had nothing to lose but his life and no one to mourn him when he died. He embraced the counter-insurgency with the fire of a zealot, knowing he might make his life-or his death-count for something. It took six long years, but in the end his side won the war. For Harvey the aftermath of what he had seen and done, the weeks of torture he'd endured finally caught up to him. He found himself in Chicago, out of money and out of drive. The slums suited him. He stayed under the radar, but he certainly didn't retire. He kept his hand in the game, using his skills to keep his little corner of hell as free of human predators as any urban gulag could expect. So now, eight years later, why did he find himself hunted, and by the very men he had helped put in power? And who was the deadly assassin that stalked the slums, and the young woman at his side? And why were the stars blinking out, one by one, in the night sky?