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In a megacity where memories are traded and corrected, a former corporate neuroengineer turned memory-dealer finds a forbidden mneme module tied to his missing sister. Faced with proof that his own signature authorized a mass correction, he must choose between profit and exposing the truth.
Rain had been a constant in Sector Twelve for longer than anyone could remember, a thin, acidic thread that welded neon to skin and advertisement to bone. The city above the horizon spilled light like an overripe fruit: glass towers bleeding brand names, holo-placards folding into the smog, corridors of scheduled brightness where people bought calm in hourly increments. Down here, under the grid of raised arterials and maintenance rails, the light was scattered, the kind that clung to rust and skin and old paper. Kaden Voss moved through it as if the damp belonged to him. His jacket shed droplets and static; the neural relay on his temple hummed like a restrained animal. He'd been a corporate neuroengineer once, then a dozen other things, then a trader in other people's memories. The trade paid, paid in credits and minor immunities, and it left him clean of attachments—clean, in a way that meant dull and salvageable.
He kept the last photograph of Lina folded into a wallet with three different circuit patches jammed into it for luck. The photo was a burned file, a scrap of better weather: Lina smiling in a kitchen that probably didn't exist anymore, hair shorter than the corporate standard, eyes daring the camera to remember. He hadn't seen her in eight years. The official report said she was part of a citizen-wipe project and had been reallocated. The other reports said nothing at all. Kaden preferred to count days instead of possibilities; counting was easier. The job the fixer had offered tonight was simple: lift a dropped crate from an obsolete shipping bay, avoid patrols, bring the package in cold. A salvage, the kind that kept hands from becoming names on a board in some ethics review.