The Exchange was the commercial heart of New Hope City, a dense district of office towers, retail complexes, transit hubs, and logistics corridors built for constant movement and uninterrupted trade. Before the outbreak, it was defined by flow—people, goods, data, and money cycling through glass atriums, underground concourses, and skybridges from dawn until long after midnight. It was efficient, crowded, and relentlessly illuminated, a place designed to never slow down.
When the outbreak struck, the Exchange collapsed inward. Evacuations failed as commuters were trapped in offices, malls, warehouses, and transit stations. Twenty years later, the district remains structurally intact but violently unstable. Power still runs through large sections, keeping billboards flickering, elevators humming, and automated systems looping through routines meant for a vanished population. Escalators move through empty malls, cargo conveyors shift forgotten freight, and screens replay advertisements to no one.
Overgrowth here is invasive and chaotic. Vegetation forces its way through loading bays, shattered storefronts, and collapsed rooftop gardens, choking stairwells and cracking pavement. Sound carries poorly—echoing through narrow streets and enclosed interiors—drawing infected into dense, unpredictable clusters that often remain hidden until disturbed. Unlike the quiet decay of Greenhaven, the Exchange feels active, loud, and dangerous, even when no one is visible.
The district is now split between rival survivor factions, its north and south locked in constant tension. Commerce continues, but only through force, contracts, and risk. People still enter the Exchange for salvage, weapons, data, medicine, and access—but every transaction demands payment beyond currency. True to its name, the Exchange is where value still moves through the city, even as it grinds lives down in the process.