Stranded on Mars and gutted by a divorce he never saw coming, megacorp hacker Derek Tobbit is drowning in augmented-reality vice, at a club where anyone can be anyone-until he falls for the woman selling the fantasy.
She's the first thing that's felt real since the corporation lured him off-world and left him to rot, but his exile was no accident. Someone engineered it, and the woman who taught him to live again is wired into a conspiracy that runs from the oxygen-starved Mars underworld to the gilded boardrooms of Earth.
Dodging chrome reapers and the best killers corp money can buy, all Derek's got are his hacking chops, a chemically optimistic outlook, and his only friend-a taxicab AI gone rogue.
Now the clock's running and everything's on the line: the woman he'd burn worlds for, his own neck, and every soul in the system. Save her. Save himself. Save the solar system. It all rides on one impossible move: place all his trust in the person holding the knife to his throat - again.