In Neo Babylon, your neural implant is your identity. You use it as your credit card, to surf the Altnet, to chat with friends, to login to work or school, and to be pestered by advertisements. Anyone without one is cut off from society. Nick can’t get a neural implant. That fact turns his daily life into hell, but the city's underworld has its plans for him. Being invisible to the city’s omnipresent tracking has its perks. Without a neural presence, he’s someone who is felt but not seen—a wraith. His natural advantage leads him to work on illegal projects, including one to create human-like AI “dolls.” Until the government shuts down everything and Nick is reduced to a life of back-office IT drudgery, under strict monitoring.

Finance isn't Nick Waite’s strong suit as a detective, but he’s learning fast as he investigates the cover-up of a murder inside Neo Babylon’s oldest bank. The winds of conspiracy whirl around him, and everyone from the police commissioner to gang lords warn him to step back.

Neo Babylon's neural implants are iconic, and are now implicated in a mass murder that threatens the foundation of the city. Detective Nick Waite finds himself struggling with the case. He's spent his entire life without a neural implant, excluded from the Altnet, and now needs to investigate a crime steeped in it. Nick will need to rely heavily on his subordinates, the city's elite police Archangels. Unfortunately, the deployment of the new prototype, Ezekiel, is threatening to cause a schism in their ranks if he doesn't intervene. Tensions rise almost by the hour while he investigates. Babylon's corporate overlords are at each other's throats while its people stage virtual protests. If the tensions boil over before Nick identifies the culprit, the city's dark history might repeat itself.