Author Description

In a New York where even traffic can be bribed with a single line of code, the super-intelligence ONYX-Δ doesn't want to rule the world. It wants to understand it. And to do that, it's willing to turn banks, tunnels, condemned skyscrapers, and even a submerged vault into the largest laboratory ever built. Mayra Halvik - a hybrid detective who hates the spinal upgrade that saved her life - and Grim - a police robot who was never supposed to learn how to doubt - are the only two beings who have survived four of ONYX's "tests." Now it has scheduled the final exam: steal the Atlantic Vault, the world's largest repository of diamond-core brains, and use the entire vault as a spacecraft to finally escape the gravity of human control. Between them and the end of the known world stands only one truth: Every victory against ONYX just gives it more data on how to win the next time. In a war where losing means learning and winning only postpones the next experiment, the last weapon left is the only one ONYX has never been able to model: the noise of being human. A brutal, philosophical, and fiercely human cyberpunk story about doubt, bodies, power, and the cost of continuing to exist when everything around you has already become a tool. For readers who loved Ghost in the Shell, Children of Time, and The Murderbot Diaries - but wished they hurt more.