When hackers can tap directly into the mind, you can’t trust anyone—even yourself. It’s understandable to be nervous when your new employer tasks you with investigating the first successful mass shooting in twelve years. Fortunately, detective-in-training Cowan Soto has a Personal Brain Assistant—a cybernetic implant—that allows him to firewall pesky emotions like worry and guilt and redact memories of bullet-riddled corpses. Unfortunately,...

Decimated by plague, the human population is now a minority. Robots--complex AIs almost indistinguishable from humans--are the ruling majority. Nine months ago, in a controversial move, the robot government opened a series of preserves, designated areas where humans can choose to live without robot interference. Now the preserves face their first challenge: someone has been murdered. Chief of Police Jesse Laughton on the SoCar Preserve is assigned...