The Anatomy of Unreason

3026. Great Russia controls the orbits, but the Lower City still reeks of damp, ozone, and poverty. There are no dragons here—but there are gravity anomalies that can flatten titanium into foil. Vasilisa Volkova fled here from her scientist father and her stepfather, Colonel Izotov, turning her aristocratic name into a street legend. To all of Sector-4, she’s Vasya. A ghost the scanners never see, her tracks erased by acid rain. Her magic is high-grade sabotage. Where others see a locked force-field door, Vasya sees a flaw in the building’s architecture. She cracks safes with a touch of her palm, but every such reckless rush has a price: her brand-new left prosthetic starts vibrating at ultrasonic frequencies, pulverizing concrete, while red circles swim before her eyes. She has a plan, simple as a wrench to the face: steal a last-generation neuro-matrix, fix her arm, and pull her little brother Ren out of her stepfather’s gilded cage.