Keith

Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission - and if he fails, humanity and the Earth itself will perish. Except that right now, he doesn't know that. He can't even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it. All he knows is that he's been asleep for a very, very long time. And he's just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company.

For most of the last hundred years, Biloxi was known for its beaches, resorts, and seafood industry. But it had a darker side. It was also notorious for corruption and vice, everything from gambling, prostitution, bootleg liquor, and drugs to contract killings. The vice was controlled by small cabal of mobsters, many of them rumored to be members of the Dixie Mafia.

He smells like blood and opium and whiskey, and underneath that something sickly sweet, like rotten fruit. That's what starvation—and death—smells like. He is so thin and frail now, almost gaunt in his appearance, almost skeletal. His current accommodations, a musty, cramped room above a motel-saloon, have also been converted into somewhat of a shrine to him: his 1877 model Colt Lightning hangs on one bedpost, and his trusty Bowie knife from the other. His hand-tailored black hat with the hand-curled brim hangs over the bed, on the wall, like some would hang a picture of Jesus.