The Rust Prophets are what happens when augmentation addiction meets religious fervor. They're a crew of about thirty-five heavily modified individuals operating out of a condemned auto plant in Detroit's Delray district, and they believe — with the unshakeable certainty of the truly addicted — that the path to transcendence is through metal. More augments. More chrome. More replacement of weak flesh with strong steel. The fact that their bodies are rejecting the modifications, that half of them are running black-market immunosuppressants to keep their implants from killing them, that several members have augmented themselves past the point of being recognizably human — none of this registers as a problem. It registers as progress.

The Prophets fund their habit through a combination of augment theft, chop-shop surgery, and occasional mercenary work. They're not subtle operators. They hit augment clinics, rob couriers carrying implant shipments, and ambush lone travelers to strip them of whatever chrome they're carrying. The stolen augments either go into a Prophet or get sold to fund the next round of modifications. Their chop shop — a filthy operating theater in the back of the auto plant — installs augments at a fraction of legitimate cost, which attracts desperate clients willing to risk infection and rejection for affordable chrome.

What makes them dangerous isn't their numbers or their tactics. It's that they're unpredictable. Augmentation addiction degrades judgment, impulse control, and pain response. A Prophet in the grip of chrome hunger will do things that a rational operator wouldn't consider. They don't retreat when they should. They don't negotiate when they could. They escalate because their modified nervous systems are screaming for more input, more sensation, more metal.