Orchid Nights

The government deregulated itself into non-existence. Then automation came and put everyone out of work. The lucky few are the employees living on a Campus of one of the remaining mega-corporations. The rest live in the Fringe, barely getting by on the scraps thrown to them by the corporations, always in fear the gangs that rule the cities. Their only escape is a trip into VR.

With one parent from the Fringe, the other from Campus, Lys had a choice few ever get to make. She chose to stay where she grew up. A hacker by night, a VR programmer by day, she lives under the thumb of her uncle, leader of the Dragon gang, hiding her identity even from her friends. And now her work on the Mindscapes draws her deeper into the Fringe’s latest threat: Dive—the drug that makes VR so real, it kills.