It’s 2033. China owns half of Tokyo. The city still hasn’t fully recovered from a devastating earthquake. The United States acts as peacekeepers between drone-enforced borders, bodymod black markets, and underground resistance efforts.  

So much has changed, but for the cops at Ninth Step Station, there is no cease-fire on murder. 

When Inspector Miyako Koreda is assigned (aka: forced) to work with a US lieutenant, Emma Higashi, she’s resentful of the change. Tokyo is more than a hotbed of criminality—it’s Miyako’s home, and her cultural knowhow has been crucial to cracking case after case. The last thing she needs is an American-backed PR stunt making it more difficult for her to do her job. But when a dead body without a face turns up on a subway platform, followed by a missing shipment of guns, Emma’s the one with the connections and tech that can help solve the case before it escalates. Together, in a race against the clock, the two investigators must overcome their mutual mistrust, or risk unchecked crime rising to the surface of a city already on the brink.