Welcome to Post-America, 2076 AD.

"We all know the answers why
They sold a lie to build Versailles!
You can roll over and die
Or you can rain down hell tonight!

You'll find your answer
On the face of the oppressed
I bow my head in respect
Of the dead
...

In the ash of your city lies fertile ground
(In the ash of your city lies fertile ground)
This nation's burning, burning down
(This nation's burning, burning down)
...

This is New York burning, this is Boston burning, this is Omaha burning
This is Washington burning, this is Pittsburgh burning, this is Birmingham burning

This is the modern Rome burning
Let it burn, let it burn, burn, burn"

- Anti-Flag, "The Modern Rome Burning"

The stage is set, don't forget to breathe...

Hadley Spencer Sinclair is a 17 year old girl with no choice but to be wise beyond her years, doing the best she can to survive in the small community of Market Street Underground, located somewhere in the subway tunnels, subterranean pedestrian walkways, concourses and sewers beneath Center City, Philadelphia. Her parents were members of P.A.C.T. and were allegedly shot by Axis security forces "while resisting arrest". 

 Sammy is a tough, streetwise 12 year old kid whose parents were killed or taken in a massive protest in Washington, DC: he followed the directions given to him, which lead him ultimately to Hadley, her too being an orphan. Since then she's taken care of him like a big sister. 

It's April 18th, 2076. Congress is expected to vote on an Axis-backed, Axis-ordered motion to repeal the 22nd Amendment of the US Constitution (under which the UA still operates), removing the two-term limit on the UA Presidency. Everyone with suspicions about Axis or sympathies for the various anti-corporate movements throughout the country fears the same thing should this motion actually pass: Aleister Smythe as President for Life. Hadley has stayed out of politics, having enough struggle and strife to deal with just keeping herself and Sammy alive. 

But the political has a way of becoming personal, as Hadley finds out, when Sammy sneaks out to attend a massive public demonstration held by the Sons of Liberty, and she has to follow him there. Without knowing it, she has taken her first steps to become a soldier in the New American Revolution.

How did we get into this mess?

The United States Balkanized decades ago into the right-wing Christian American Federation in the northwest, the American Union in the east (theoretical successor of the United States), the (presently corporate occupied) Free State of California, and the Free City of Denver smack in the middle, divvied up like cold war Berlin. And in the wake of decades of resource wars and superstorms, all of these Americas are less important than the multinational megacorps warring over the corpse of the old America.

Our story concerns itself chiefly with the American Union and its corporate masters.

Axis Inc. is a massive international megacongolomerate majority owned by the aristocratic Smythe family. Initially a defense contractor (and still active in that sector, from small arms to aircraft), Axis has been responsible for most of the American Union's crucial infrastructure for many years. Prison privatization was nothing new by the 2050s, but by 2064 every prison in the American Union was officially Axis run and proud of it.

Elected by the peerless political influence of the Smythe Super-PAC, President Sara Wallace legalized private police forces in the same year. The civic experiment of privatizing the entire police force of the city of Detroit with Axis corporate security forces was quickly repeated in other cities, including Philadelphia, Washington DC, and the flooded ruins of New York.

Not every red-blooded American in the American Union was happy with the corporate kleptocracy seizing their nation. Spurred on by footage of gross corruption and police brutality, spontaneous riots broke out across cities across the AU, especially violent and hard to contain in cities where Axis was in the process of taking over the policing. Out of the chaos of these riots, two "domestic terrorist" organizations appeared seemingly from nowhere to take center stage in the public debate: the Chicago-based Patriots Against Corporate Tyranny (PACT), and the Philadelphia-based Sons of Liberty.

After years of insurgency waged against Axis Incorporated facilities, personnel, and infrastructure by P.A.C.T. and SoL cells, on November 8th, 2072, Aleister Smythe, board member and CIO of Axis Incorporated, was elected President of the American Union. Against still rising protests, in May of the following year, Axis Incorporated purchased the national debt of the American Union (much of it left over from the USA) from its creditors. For the first time ever, a major world nation (and former superpower) owed a debt of $33 trillion dollars not to its fellow nations but to a private corporate landlord.

The age of the corporate nation-state had begun.