Open mouths, empty heads, big bytes.

Cunégonde doesn't hack systems. She haunts them. From a death-trapped microwave to the hollowed-out data centers of Neo Babylon, she types code into things that shouldn't accept it — and they obey. They always obey.

Darby Skelm just needed to run one more package through the neon-bled streets.

Instead, he's neck-deep in a reallocation scheme that smells like burning printer plastic and betrayal. Bounty hunters on his heels. SKELM CORPS in his head. And a woman who holds onto broken tech like other people hold grudges.

She calls it bootloading. He calls it a death wish.

When the void starts collapsing and the data centers freeze solid, only one of them gets to decide what reboots — and what stays dead.

Some things aren't meant to come back online.