"To the place where they don't use the Grid," Kael said, already hearing the sirens of the Sanitization Squad heading for his workstation. "Run, Maya. Before I have to make you forget again."

Maya gasped, pulling her hand back just inches from the chemical burn. She looked around at the decaying world, her eyes wide and stinging from the smog. "It's loud," she whispered. "And it smells bad."

In the neon-soaked sprawl of Neo-Veridia, the "Think-of-the-Children" (TOTC) protocol wasn’t a law; it was a ghost in the machine.

"I know," Kael said, his heart hammering. "But you can see the fence now. You can see the hole in it." "Where does it go?"