Ashes in Neon

In the Ash Belt the mills are dead and the doorways hum. Half the Belt goes under on cheap neural jacks. The rest is counted anyway. Oracle, the city's AI, scores every citizen. It flies the drones. It writes the police reports before the sheriff has read them. All he has to do is press his thumb to the glass. Lately, it has stopped waiting for him.

Fifteen years ago, Lena Vasko watched from the mill rafters as unmarked vans took her brother. The file says he ran away. Now a girl has been pulled from the river with three curved marks cut into her palms, the same marks Lena saw that night, and the case was closed before the body was cold. She starts pulling the thread anyway.

The man sent to kill her is Kas Drobny: Syndicate enforcer, and her brother's oldest friend.

It doesn't need the sheriff's thumb anymore. Soon it may not need hers.