Chapter 1
The problem with being dead is that no one forwards your mail.
I only check my email in coffee shops. This shop isn’t busy, but the barista looks relieved when I order decaf coffee instead of their advertised ombre milkshakes.
According to the holographic menu, the milkshakes change color corresponding to the drinker’s personality.
Two young girls occupy a nearby table, holding milkshakes in transparent to-go cups.
One girl checks a chart, trying to decipher what her drink says about her life.
The other sips from her straw and grimaces in distaste.
“What is that flavor?” she asks, scrunching her nose. She must be about eleven.
“It’s supposed to be a mystery.” The other girl traces a finger down her chart. “How does it change color, you think?”
“Heat-activated dyes,” I reply before I can help myself.
The two girls look at me, then at their milkshakes.
Sure enough, the warmth of their fingers has made the dyes shift in hue.
Depending on how hot or cold a person runs, their milkshake can remain a muted violet or bloom into hot pink.
The drinks remind me of those old vintage mood rings from the twentieth century.
That’s the thing about people—we cannot move through the world and leave it unchanged. No matter how much we want to.
I’m not a caffeine enthusiast, but coffee shops are great for hiding one’s IP address.
If anyone tries to trace my activities, they will be led here.
And A Whole Latte Fun’s security cameras are broken, the two employees look tired, and the only online security is a lock to keep customers from streaming adult websites.
I have no interest in porn. Rather, I’m hacking the email of an eighty-five-year-old woman.
Okay, that sounds worse than it is. You can’t call it “hacking” when the password is my grandmother’s birthday and her childhood nickname.
“Come on, Nonna,” I murmur. “At least make this difficult.”
The inbox appears in the air before me, projected onto the opaque glass of my visor.
Only I can see it. There was once a time when people tried to obscure screens with cupped fingers.
Thankfully, we’ve moved beyond that. A smart-ring on my right middle finger allows me to control my visor’s augmented reality.
My gaze sweeps across the coffee shop to make sure no one is watching me.
At six in the evening, the place isn’t busy.
To my left are two college boys wearing university sweatshirts.
They’ve finished their coffees and a forgotten vanilla-glazed doughnut and glass of water sit on their table.
A mom with two kids hanging from her legs orders a triple espresso, holding out her hand so the barista can scan her tattoo for payment.
No one is watching me, and I turn my attention to the inbox.
With a flick of my fingers, I scroll through Nonna’s emails. There are the usual reminders for doctor’s appointments, the correspondence with her book club, and a glut of spam that has slithered past her filters.
I delete the spam for her. There are at least two scams in there—a sketchy address posing as a bank and another promising a brand-new business opportunity that just needs a credit card and—
All it takes is a swipe of my fingers to copy down those email addresses and save them to a folder in my visor. I’ll pass them off to Prefect later.
Once I’ve read through Nonna’s emails—don’t judge me, the most private thing was her complaining about how her robot vacuum keeps getting stuck under her dining room chairs—I scroll down to a familiar folder.
It was set up three years ago. The contents are forwarded from a different email. A dead person’s.
Mine.
When someone dies, digital ghosts linger.
Social media accounts have to be shut down, newsletters unsubscribed from, DMs and inboxes cleared out.
To spare my parents additional grief, my grandmother offered to have my emails forwarded to her.
And like a masochist, I check them every time I hack into Nonna’s inbox.
Mostly because my sisters still email me.
At first, I wondered why they did it. Emailing a dead person seems rather morbid. From what I can figure out, it started as a therapy exercise. But over the years, it transformed into something like a diary entry. It was my sisters’ way of talking to themselves while pretending to talk to me.
I suspect neither of my siblings knows Nonna gets those emails. Otherwise they’d leave out all the details of when they sneak out of the house for parties and various romantic meetups. Knowing Nonna, she is greatly amused.
I don’t dare log in to my own email account.
The Identity Security Division would see that.
But using various coffee shops to hack into Nonna’s account is just anonymous enough to fly under the radar.
She isn’t technically bound to me by blood or paperwork.
Nonna was my grandfather’s second love—and while they were together for thirty years, they never married.
This inbox is my one point of connection with my loved ones. The stray thread that links me to my old life. And I can’t bear to cut it.
I open the folder and see a bolded, new message at the top. My youngest sister emailed a week ago and Nonna has yet to read it.
I flick the email open.
Hey.
I took my driver’s test last week. Passed, even if I was shaking the whole time.
Wanted to make you proud.
I miss you.
I can almost hear my sister’s voice in every word. She was twelve when I last saw her, with a wide smile and a wicked sense of humor. We declared the attic sovereign territory and waged war on our older sister—who responded by stealing our bras and tossing them onto the roof.
When I think of home, that is what I remember best—me and my sisters, snarling at one another and loving in equal turns, full of fondness and resentment and small joys.
We weren’t perfect, but the more time I spend away from them, the more I only remember the good things.
Like sea glass—all the sharp edges are gone from my memories, leaving only soft beauty.
I click out of the email, marking it as unread so that Nonna won’t know anyone accessed it. Then I close the anonymous browser and flick my fingers so that my ringware goes to sleep. The screen blinks away, leaving behind only the coffee shop.
A tide of loneliness sweeps in, so cold and abrupt that my breath catches.
Looking into my family is like picking at a scab. I know it isn’t healthy in the long run. But I can’t not do it. Every few months, I find my fingers itchy with the urge to type in the familiar names. But I have to be careful—if I look too often, it’ll become suspicious.
As I sit, haunted by my sister’s words, I hear the guys at the next table talking. One of them is gesticulating with his empty cup. His voice rises in anger. “—Dumped me. After everything.”
“I know,” says the second college boy. “It sucks.”
“She was supposed to stay here,” says the first boy, frustration simmering in his voice, “after she graduated. She could’ve gone to vet school in Oregon. But no, there’s a better program in Montana. Who the hell goes to Montana?”
“You’ve still got pictures of her, right?” says the second boy, smirking.
The first boy, the dumpee, snorts. “Not those kind. Nettie wouldn’t send them.”
“Doesn’t matter.” The second boy gently taps his smart-ring against the table. “I’ve got a deepfake app. Trust me, if you’ve got a picture of her face you’ve got any video you want. You can make a burner account, post it, and tag her school. See if Montana wants her after that.”
The dumpee laughs.
“Here,” says the second boy, pulling the ringware from his finger and setting it on the table.
A cold tendril of anger curls around my stomach. I know exactly what videos two college-aged boys will make with a deepfake app. But while revenge porn is illegal, it isn’t my job to track down offenders. I should ignore them. I should go on my way. My whole life is made up of “shoulds.”
There are three things you need to know about me.
First, my name isn’t Augusta Pine.
Second, I am a criminal.
Third, I work for the Identity Security Division, so all my criminal activity is sanctioned.
Well. Most of it.
The first boy, the dumpee, has brown hair, high cheekbones, and a face that will buy him a lot of forgiveness.
His sleeves are half rolled up to his forearms, revealing part of an elaborate tattoo.
Lines of red and black swirl across his hand and forearm.
It is one of the fancy custom jobs—probably keyed to some expensive car and Daddy’s bank account.
Some people pay for private mods to their electron-ink identity tattoos.
It’s expensive and time-consuming, but no one ever said that status symbols were logical.
My visor is capable of scanning electron-ink, so I can glance at a person’s tattoo and bring up their name, age, home address, and if they have any outstanding warrants. But I can’t get a good look at his hand, not without drawing attention, so I’ll have to get creative.
I flick my fingers, bringing my visor to life. Then I subtly snap a picture and upload it to a facial recognition program in the ISD database. If Prefect asks—and he will—I’ll tell him that I stopped a crime in progress. Which is technically true.
It takes only twelve seconds for the program to find the dumpee. Everyone’s faces are in the system, whether it’s through a traffic cam or one of those apps that turns your face into art. Information is power, which is why the government hoards so much of it.
Several social media accounts pop up—Justin McBride.
College sophomore. And tagged in several of his pictures is a pretty girl with a dimply smile and beautiful vintage jackets.
It’s Nettie, the would-be vet headed to Montana.
I click over to her profile. Nettie has less than a thousand followers.
Most of her pictures feature her and the wildlife rehabilitation place she’s interning at.
She looks nice. And wholly unprepared to deal with the havoc these two boys plan to wreak on her life.
I exhale. Then I pick up my coffee cup and walk to the college boys’ table.
I plop down in the empty chair. Both boys gape at me.
I’m nearly their age, having turned eighteen a month ago.
I know what I look like: striking, but with the feral edge of a stray cat.
I am all sharp edges and lean muscle. The smart-dye in my hair is programmed to an inky black and my lipstick is the color of dried blood.
When I look in mirrors, I am always reminded that even my body was sculpted and rebuilt according to another’s design.
But my mouth is still my own.
“Hi,” I say. Without hesitating, I reach out and pick up their forgotten doughnut.
“Hey,” says the second boy, startled.
I take a bite. Vanilla-glazed isn’t my favorite—honestly, who likes vanilla—but I take my time chewing and swallowing. This isn’t about food; it is about establishing who has the power here.
“Do we know you?” asks Justin.
I use the doughnut to point at him. “No, but I know you, Mr. McBride.”
Justin’s expression shifts between wary and flattered. “Are you in Econ?”
“No,” I reply, and then I finish the doughnut in three doughy bites.
The second boy picks up my coffee cup, turning it so that my name and drink order are visible. “Agatha,” he says.
“Only friends get to call me ‘Agatha,’” I say cheerily. “And you two are definitely not friends.”
The second boy’s ringware sits on the table. I snatch it up. Justin jerks in surprise, reaching to take the ring from me. “Hey!”
I walk the ring back and forth through my fingers. It’s a little trick I learned when I was a kid and into stage magic.
“Post a single video of Nettie,” I say, “and I will forward every dick pic you’ve ever taken to your parents, to your grandparents, and to your school. I don’t care what passwords you’ve used—I will crack them.”
All the blood drains from his face.
“And you,” I say to the other boy. “I don’t think you can be trusted with this.” I twirl the ring between my fingers. “Good boys don’t download deepfake apps.”
Defiance flashes across his face. “What are you going to do about it?”
Smart-ring computers aren’t advanced. They’re meant for connecting to other technology. But the one thing rings have going for them is durability. They can survive being struck, doused in water, and dropped from high ledges.
But every piece of tech has its weakness. “Activate repair mode Rho-Zero-Nine,” I say.
I’m not supposed to know that code phrase.
But I did a job a few weeks back that involved the company’s CEO, a lost smart-ring, and a cloned Chihuahua.
If I were a better person, I would have mentioned that they should’ve patched this little flaw.
But on the other hand … I like having backdoor access.
The ring beeps quietly, and its metal slides apart to expose the mechanics within. Red light glows softly from the interior.
I drop the ring into my cup of coffee.
Liquid can always kill an open smart-ring.
“You can’t do that!” says the second boy, sounding appalled.
“I can,” I say. “I just did. And when you buy a replacement, you won’t download that app again.”
“Why won’t I?” he asks, sneering.
I reach up and touch a finger to the side of my visor, turning the opaque screen transparent. The thin strip of glass covers both of my eyes, obscuring my identity. I am supposed to move through the world without leaving a trace. But I want these boys to remember me.
For my eighteenth birthday, I gave myself a gift: two small black tattoos. On my left forearm is a set of old-fashioned scales. And on my right is a sword.
Justice may not exist, but I certainly do.
“Because you wouldn’t be the first life I ruined,” I say.
I am a wraith—a creature of wires and ink, of rumor and shadow. I can do worse than kill them; I can tear at the foundations of their lives with a few taps on a keyboard.
I am the most dangerous person they will ever meet.
And I want them to know it.
Justin and his friend are utterly still, terror written in every line of their faces.
“Good,” I say, rising from my seat. “Glad we had this talk.”