Jace Varn’s boots splashed through a puddle in New Cascadia’s slums, the neon glow of holo-ads reflecting off the slick pavement like a fever dream. The data stick from the Docks job was still in his jacket, a nagging weight next to the credits he’d scored from the Wire Rats’ data run. Riko’s silence was a problem, and the player talk—first the squat, then Milo, Taz’s buyers, and now street gossip—was piling up like bad debt. Those glitches, flashes of code in the air, were messing with his head, too. Jace needed to keep moving, keep hustling. Sitting still was how you got caught in this city.
He’d grabbed another courier job to stay afloat, this one from a new contact named Vix, a slick-talking woman who ran packages for high-rollers dipping their toes in the black market. The gig was st
