When the World Went Dark is a dystopian story of the future that begins in what was once Hong Kong with the mainland - Jungwa - being the landmass that Old City is attached to even though owned by a separate entity than Jungwa within the Corporation. Across the harbor is the high-tech island of New City that is owned by still another entity. Both cities have different legal systems thus rights and freedoms. Both cities represent different opportunities for their citizens that ultimately provoke the citizens in Old City to begin to rebel, which brings them into conflict with the security forces headed at the street level by Captain David McStern. Yet more is at stake then basic freedoms as McStern at the street level and along the Border of Jungwa learns. His high ranking counter-part in New City Nigel Roberts is confronted with the same revelation: an underground "skin-trade" exists for experimentation up to and including "Rendition" that involves the government sanctioned New City research center. As both men begin to follow the various clues they discover in the course of their investigation they are confronted with Kahn: a product of "Rendition" himself that was taken from the deserts of Jungwa and used as a mercenary. Although mind-jacked by drugs and other bio-tech implants that suppress his spirit for many years Kahn is able to break free and begins the desperate search for self and meaning. In the course of his break for freedom he finds out about others who have been likewise "taken for Rendition" and seeks to free them also. It is in the process of this escape that Kahn begins to work with Roberts and his crew to save even more which brings them into conflict with the powers to be in both cities including the Eastern Sea cartel from the mysterious city of Artillect that is attempting to high-jack the bio-tech firm and the soldiers it had begun to breed: the Chimera.