[2] The plot centers around Chevette Washington, a young bicycle messenger who lives in the ad hoc, off-the-grid community that has grown on the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge in the aftermath of a devastating earthquake.

Among the pursuers are Svobodov and Orlovsky, two Russian immigrants who reside in San Francisco and are employed as cops,[3] as well as Loveless, a ruthless corporate hitman with gold canine teeth.

Meanwhile, Berry Rydell, a former cop turned private security agent, is contracted to recover the glasses for Lucius Warbaby, an intimidating and presumably successful "skip-tracer", a sort of bondsman/bounty hunter.

The setting is California in 2006,[4] part of a dystopian world where the middle class has essentially evaporated leaving only multinational corporations and their exorbitantly rich elite and the poor who are mostly security officers, couriers, or otherwise work in minor service positions.

Many of the poor live illegally and entirely outside the normal economy in places like The Bridge engaged in dubious enterprises such as theft, drugs, weapons, gambling, prostitution, and operation of unlicensed restaurants and doctor's offices.