The Nexus Core
Pre-Collapse Identity
This was SOMA and the Financial District — the ground zero of the global tech industry, where billion-dollar startups were born in converted warehouses and the stock exchanges hummed with capital that shaped the world. Market Street ran through it like an artery connecting the waterfront to the civic center.
Current Character
The Nexus Core is the administrative and economic center of the entire Sprawl. The Lattice — Nexus Dynamics' 2.3-kilometer crystalline arcology — dominates the skyline like a translucent spine, its foundations driven into bedrock where the Financial District meets the Rim. Market Street still functions as a central axis, though now it channels corporate foot traffic between data terminals rather than commuters between offices. Every surface in this sector is a sensor. Every footstep is logged.
Terrain & Atmosphere
Urban flat to gentle slope, the terrain barely registers underfoot — this is a sector of engineered surfaces, polished stone, and smart-glass facades. The eastern edge drops sharply to the Rim wall, where the world falls away sixty feet to the Dregs canyon below. From the Rim's lip, you can see miles of corrugated rooftops and perpetual haze stretching to the East Bay. The contrast is the point.
Corporate Presence
Nexus Dynamics controls absolutely. The Lattice processes more data per second than entire nations once produced, and its network backbone extends through every building, every transit node, every embedded sensor in the sector. Triumph, a Rothwell subsidiary managing supply chain logistics, also operates from the old Financial District — its Exchange facility displaying cargo manifests on screens that once showed stock tickers. The two corporations coexist because Nexus controls the infrastructure Triumph depends on.
Key Locations
The Lattice (Nexus Dynamics HQ and global data processing center), The Exchange (Triumph HQ), The Glass District (luxury retail and entertainment zone where transparency is both architectural principle and surveillance philosophy), The Lattice Nexus (primary ground-side network access point).
Sensory Detail
The air is aggressively filtered — sterile, temperature-controlled, carrying a faint ozone undertone from the data processing arrays overhead. Sound is curated: ambient corporate tones in public spaces, the subliminal hum of network relays beneath the pavement, the whisper of automated transit. At night, The Lattice glows with processing activity, its crystalline faces shifting color with data load, turning the entire sector into a light show that nobody asked for.
Daily Life
You are never unwatched here, and after long enough, you stop noticing — which is precisely how they want it.