East Coast Protection Directive

Fractured Horizon

De: Wendell Sweet

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

The wind, a perpetual scavenger, scoured the skeletal remains of what was once a thriving metropolis, now a jagged silhouette against a bruised, perpetually hazy sky. The East Coast, a fractured coastline of splintered territories and crumbling concrete, bore the scars of an apocalypse that had long since passed, yet its echo reverberated in every gust of grit-laden air, every shadowed alleyway, and every wary glance exchanged between survivors. Civilization, as it had been, was a ghost, a whisper in the wind, replaced by a brutal, anarchic present where law was a luxury few could afford, and order a fleeting, precious commodity.

The ECPD, or the East Coast Protection Directorate, clung to existence like barnacles on a sinking ship. Outpost Delta, their most significant bastion of order, was a testament to their precarious position. It was a patchwork fortress, cobbled together from salvaged shipping containers, reinforced with scrap metal, and defended by officers whose weary determination was etched into the lines of their faces. Their vehicles, hulking beasts born from the mating of salvaged chassis and repurposed military hardware, rumbled with a defiance that belied their often-fragile state.

Maya Ramos, a miracle worker with grease-stained hands and eyes that saw the soul of an engine, kept these metal titans breathing, her workshop a sanctuary of organized chaos in the surrounding desolation.


Alex Chen, a man who had once patrolled the gleaming, albeit corrupt, streets of NYPD, now navigated this shattered world with a heavy heart and an even heavier conscience. The rot he’d fought in the old world had merely spread, festering into a continent-wide plague of desperation. Disillusionment was a constant companion, but beneath the weary cynicism, the detective’s instinct, honed by years of chasing shadows, still burned bright. He understood the moral compromises demanded by this new era, the necessary evils that kept the fragile flame of order from being extinguished entirely, yet he fought to maintain a semblance of the justice he’d once sworn to uphold.


The landscape itself was a testament to the world’s unraveling. Once vibrant shores were now choked with plastic debris and the skeletal remains of ships, their hulls like beached leviathans. Inland, the arteries of commerce, the highways and byways, had become no-man’s-lands. They were arteries of peril, patrolled by opportunistic raiders and desperate scavengers. The air, thick with the perpetual haze of unchecked industry and the lingering dust of forgotten cataclysms, offered little respite. Each breath was a gamble, a taste of the world's slow, suffocating demise. Resources were a constant source of conflict. Fuel was hoarded, water purified with desperate ingenuity, and food, when found, was a treasure to be defended with one’s life. Every settlement was a fortress, every journey a potential battlefield.