Mercury's Son

How can a man with an artificial soul ever trust himself? NOTT--the drug that lets Moderators sift truth from lies and see the last moments of a murder victim’s life. But it doesn’t work alone: it works only for those who have had a part of their brains--the seat of their soul--removed and replaced with the synthorganic. To some, like Valko Gangleri, it’s a price worth paying, but Valko doesn’t know the true cost of power. He’s tasked with investigating a double murder; seemingly motivated by a conflict between the secular Centra Autorita’s drive to get humanity out of the hole it has dug for itself and the Temple of the Wounded Mother’s zealous pursuit of atonement through martyrdom--the healing of the Earth with faith and blood. Valko must pursue the killer out of the security of the Plena, the megastructures that enclose the surviving cities of the Earth. He must go out to the moribund world, where death flies on the wind as dust--nanodestroyers that scour away every trace of life. All the while, an accident early in the investigation is causing Valko’s implant to malfunction. He was born ruthless and cold; on NOTT he has empathy and humanity. Now, his dispassionate mind is forced to deal with ever more demanding synthetic emotions and even as his implant starts showing him visions of a wider, deeper reality, it’s beginning to kill him. Manipulated, betrayed, doomed; Valko must strive to solve the last case he’ll ever work, and maybe find redemption, before his time runs out.