Justin emerges from California after making his way through the buffer zone where giant insects and spiders roam and enters Reno, Nevada.
He finds it a terrifying desert landscape where water is more valuable than gold and the primary tactic of the government, controlled by those known as the casino lords, and most prominently the Hodge family, is to weaponize water's necessity by overcharging it to the citizens which typically forces them to gamble in hopes of making enough money to afford it and become enslaved to the debt it creates. The twentieth century technology from California behind him remains the same in Nevada, or close thereabouts, and this provides opportunities for Justin with the advanced technology found in his bionic augmentation armor and his bionic android Lincoln.
When Justin arrives, he is penniless, has no food, no water, nothing at all but the hovercycle he flew in on. In order to make some desperately needed money, he utilizes his era's technology by accessing the deep underground desalination plants through the still-remaining fire hydrants to get some water and sell it low-priced. It's supposedly not illegal but he is still rebuffed rather aggressively about it by the water sellers, who are the people who sell water for the casino lords. Seeing this, and suspecting Justin has a secret cache of water somewhere, a desperate woman named Frances, who is protected by an armed force of Texans that makes her feel comfortable enough to bargain with him, makes a deal with Justin to fill up her tanker truck of water from his secret cache which she and her own hometown desperately require.
Justin agrees out of need but by utilizing desalination plants no one knows about and selling an absurd amount of water for money that Justin and Frances both need before refilling can be a dangerous act, Texans or no Texans. This would cut out a large number of Hodge's water sellers and while most people would consider this a beloved act of kindness, since he intends to charge much less than the water sellers, it would almost certainly enrage the Hodges. Such an act is not something the Hodges will tolerate, viewing any stranger selling water in Nevada as an unacceptable loss of profit and an attack on their authority.
The Hodges would feel owed and if they could not get Justin to gamble, and Justin doesn't like to gamble, then there are other ways. More unconventional, violent, and unexpected ways to even the score and perhaps even make a whole lot of money in the process.