Neo-Kyoto doesn't sleep, and neither does what's hunting them.
Seventeen-year-old Daemon survives the rain-slicked slums of Neo-Kyoto the only way he knows how: stealing data nobody was supposed to touch, and coming home to the one thing in the city that's never lied to him: his cybernetically modified dog, Oneko.
Then a routine heist goes wrong in a way Daemon can't walk back. The hardware fused into Oneko isn't scrap. It's an Acheron Corporation prototype, and Oneko is Subject Zero-Nine, built and abandoned by the company that runs Neo-Kyoto end to end. The data shard from the same job holds something worse: proof of Project Neural Net, the program Acheron uses to make street kids disappear and never explain why.
Acheron's chief enforcer, Strike Lead Vane, is already moving. So Daemon and Oneko run, straight into the legend of Gimlorok, the hacker who supposedly died trying to get this exact truth out of the city, years before.
Nobody built Oneko to be loved. He is anyway. That might be the only weapon Daemon has left.
The world, and who's in it
Daemon
Expelled. Wanted. Goes by Kuroi now.
Expelled from the Sector 2 Technical Academy eight months ago — officially for failing his hardware finals. He knows that's not the real reason. He used to have three clean shirts and a clear path to a corporate desk at Acheron Logistics. Now he goes by Kuroi on the street, and Acheron's put half a million marks on that name, more than enough to retire on, if retiring were a thing people like him got to do. Fast hands, faster mouth, a talent for stealing data nobody was supposed to touch. Doesn't have a family. Has a dog he emptied his pockets for in a scrapyard cage three years ago. That's the whole plan.
Oneko
Subject Zero-Nine. Acheron wants him back.
Half machine down to the bone, one eye organic, one a cybernetic ring of cyan light. Daemon found him bleeding in a scrapyard cage three years ago and never asked what he used to be. Turns out he's Subject Zero-Nine, an Acheron prototype host unit nobody was supposed to lose. Doesn't talk much. When he does, it's usually the truest thing said all day.
Strike Lead Vane
Retrieval Lead. Three years on one file.
Acheron's chief retrieval specialist, full executive authority, three years spent on exactly one file. Vane doesn't patrol, he purges, block by block, and the whole Low-Seams knows to go dark the second his sweep lights the grid. Cybernetic armor. A titanium blade. Three red targeting lenses that don't blink. Fast enough to close twenty feet in two strides, calm enough to read a civilian casualty estimate twice and authorize the purge anyway. Nobody's ever seen his face. Doesn't raise his voice. Doesn't need to.
Gimlorok
The ghost story Acheron couldn't kill.
Seven years before Daemon ever picked a lock, someone else got this close: a hacker who cracked Acheron's grid wide open, built a broadcast key meant to put the truth on every screen in Neo-Kyoto, and never got the chance to fire it. Acheron scrubbed the name from every record it could reach. It never managed to scrub the story. Every runner in the Low-Seams has heard some version of what happened to Gimlorok. Daemon's about to find out how much of it is real.
Neo-Kyoto / Acheron Corp
The city and the company that owns it.
A city built in the rain by a company that owns the rain. Acheron runs the power, the police, the trains, and most of what people call the future. Five levels down under Acheron Tower, a program nobody's supposed to say the name of turns street kids into hardware. The future has a cost. Acheron just makes sure nobody who could add it up stays around to finish the math.
Nick Cappello
Nick Cappello writes cyberpunk for readers who grew up half-online and never fully trusted the parts of the world that felt too convenient. Terminal Velocity is his first novel, the opening chapter of a trilogy he's been building for years.
The trilogy
Three books. One city that doesn't let go.
Out now
Terminal Velocity
Out now. A stolen dog, a stolen secret, and a city that wants both back.
Coming
Rust and Ruin
Coming next. Daemon and Oneko run further than the city ever mapped, and find out they're not the only ones who got out.
Coming
Escape Velocity
Coming. Whatever's left of Acheron doesn't stay standing.
Read it tonight
Terminal Velocity is available now on Kindle and in paperback.
