
by Rodolfo Costa
James Blake is a war veteran and ex-Marine from the United Nations Space Navy, now a cyber-drug pusher on the streets of Port Ares, a Martian city boiling with revolt against corporate control. He lives with his wife, Sara, and their son, Jimmy, while working for the Union, a street gang born from a syndicate created to protect the Martian people—now one of the forces driving the violence tearing the city apart. Then he receives a call. Someone wants to meet him. A hit job. One bullet is all it takes to kill Julius Voss, a methane magnate preparing to move his business to Titan, Saturn’s moon. But that bullet will change James’s life forever. Beyond the streets of Port Ares lies a Solar System built around methane, industry, and corporate power: magnificent cities constructed around fuel, colossal ships crossing the void, and wars fought over commodities worth more than human lives. But the darkness of space and the metal beasts of industry are not the only threats. Ghostsmithing—an illegal form of mind hacking—can alter a person's perception of reality, forge identities, preserve the dead, and even create virtual conscious beings. In a world where flesh can become machine and the mind can become code, James will be forced to confront a question humanity has been avoiding for generations: What happens when we can no longer tell where the human mind ends and technology begins?
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