Neural Wraith

In Neo Babylon, your neural implant is your identity. You use it as your credit card, to surf the Altnet, to chat with friends, to login to work or school, and to be pestered by advertisements. Anyone without one is cut off from society. Nick can’t get a neural implant. That fact turns his daily life into hell, but the city's underworld has its plans for him. Being invisible to the city’s omnipresent tracking has its perks. Without a neural presence, he’s someone who is felt but not seen—a wraith.

Finance isn't detective Nick Waite’s strong suit, but he’s learning fast as he investigates the cover-up of a murder inside Neo Babylon’s oldest bank. The winds of conspiracy whirl around him, and everyone from the police commissioner to gang lords warn him to step back. Taking the easy way out isn’t in his nature, however. He’s gotten where he is by being stubborn and a chance to knock a corrupt bank down a peg is too good to pass up. But all isn’t well with his partners, the police’s elite Archangels.

Neo Babylon's neural implants are iconic—and are now implicated in a mass murder that threatens the foundation of the city. Detective Nick Waite finds himself struggling with the case. He's spent his entire life without a neural implant, excluded from the Altnet, and now needs to investigate a crime steeped in it. Nick will need to rely heavily on his subordinates, the city's elite police Archangels. Unfortunately, the deployment of the new prototype, Ezekiel, is threatening to cause a schism in their ranks if he doesn't intervene.