"I was born here, in this forgotten hole a mile un'er t'Empire streets. They call it t'Sewers. T'is the place where Boss Dog Magistrate dumps his trash. Us..."

Huddled under a narrow slash of light in a dank and debris-strewn alley of Regent Street, seventeen-year-old Donovan Washington Rush quickly scribbled the words across the cracked, yellowed pages of an old hand-bound journal. Barely bigger than his hand, the book overflowed with a lifetime of maps, all surrounded by musings on freedom, tyranny, and rights. It was all that was left of Donovan's father, Dr. Princeton Rush, a man long since thought dead by the Empire's hand.

Here in the relative anonymity of the underground maze he called home, Donovan knew he was being watched—not just by the hidden electronic eyes of the Empire, but by the people of the Sewers themselves, compelled to complicity by the Empire's constant messages of fear and reprisal. The Empire had its eyes everywhere.

For Donovan, possessing such a book as Dr. Rush's journal was a "Black Flag" offense—an act of subversion punishable by public execution. Yet the Empire was where Donovan and the book were both headed. This made for two forbidden crimes under one cover.

"They call us "Sewer Rats" but these Sewers once made up t'original city, t'very seat of t'Empire. T'is t'seat for sure, right un'er Boss Dog's ass. T'nite it changes. T'nite I take the first step fo' my brothers and sisters o' the sword, fo' t'Sewers whole...Freedom or death!"