In 1946, an alien virus ravaged the world, its results as random as a hand of cards. From that fateful moment to the present day, those infected either draw the black queen and die, draw an ace and receive superpowers, or draw the joker and are bizarrely mutated. Today, Aces, Jokers, and uninfected humans live in relative peace. Francis "Franny" Black is an uninfected human cop, trying to police a world filled with people with the extraordinary powers that he lacks. Newly-and some would say too suddenly-promoted to detective, he has been working out of Wild Card Central, the precinct in Jokertown where the bulk of the virus victims fell in 1946. Franny's father was one of the heroes of the precinct, killed in the line of duty, and Franny is finding it hard to fill his dead father's shoes. That is, until he's given a particularly insidious case and starts uncovering long-buried secrets that his father might have died to protect.