The player characters are SLA Operatives, a cross between freelance FBI agents and professional athletes. The ops carry out their mission, get hosed down, get paid, and go up in security clearance. Everyone else are SLA Employees, Shivers, unemployed, or they're terrorists working for the Rival Companies. SLA is the only legal company. So, that's the setting, now to the rules.
Character creation is halfway through the book, after the setting, task rules, and combat system.
Don't try to read this book in order - for instance, the races are described after the chargen section, but of course you're assumed to know all about them throughout the setting material. On the good side, you can build just about any character you can imagine in this setting with these rules, and they seem to be fairly balanced. I use a variant character creation system I found online that restricts points to being spent in certain areas, so characters made with it will be somewhat appropriately balanced, and to make it easier to figure out what to do with your points. The original system is functional, but provides a choice overload in many ways. If the task is simpler than your skill rank, you don't even need to roll.