"Everyone's chipped, Detective. Social credit, medical history, transit passes. But this isn't a municipal chip." Thorne produced a small handheld scanner, its screen flickering with angry red error messages. "It's running a proprietary encryption I can't break. And it's not in his skull. It's wrapped around his brainstem like a parasitic vine. This man wasn't just chipped. He was wired ."

"Julian, it's Lena. I have a DOA with a military-grade brainstem implant and a severed mouse in his hand. He's the sixty-first in a week. I'm sending you the coroner's notes. Call me back before I become number sixty-two."

"No. My sixty-first this week ." Thorne finally looked up, his bifocals speckled with rain. "And the most interesting by a wide margin."