Irreconcilable Differences

Rachel Santana is thirty-six years old. She's an agent for Interpol Covert Services. Before that, she was an interrogator at the White Sands Reeducation Camp, following the breakup of the United States. Before that, she was a prisoner there. Before that, a Yankee, one of a group of corporate mercenaries trying to extract something like a victory in the Middle East. Before that, she was a United States Marine. She's a survivor. A cop. A soldier. A destroyer. A killer. Now, Robert Neil, Rachel's boss and soon-to-be ex-husband, has implanted a digital copy of Rachel's mind in Michelle Marie (Micki) Blake, a 16-year-old farmgirl-hacker in rural Kansas. The mission: Learn the local hacker ecology. Locate the dangerous new player prowling the rural networks. Destroy him. Take no prisoners. Leave no incriminating evidence. As covert missions go, it should be pretty simple. There's nothing simple, though, about being conjoined at the cortex with someone else. There's nothing simple about life on the farm, the life of a high school student, the life of a 16-year-old in post-United States Kansas. And the rural hacker ecology is unraveling with new forces in play, new powers, new players. It will take all of Rachel's experience just to survive. All of Micki's skills as a hacker to dig for the truth. All of their combined abilities to put the pieces together, to find the real threat despite the web of deception and half-truth that surrounds both their operation and Copy-Rachel's very existence. And somehow, they have to avoid being grounded.