Karl Latte doesn't like the 21st century. Not recombinants, not Ultimate Reality, not Digitally Mastered Immortals. Most of all he dislikes the talent that's damned him–the ability to see into minds.

A forty-year-old ex cop with bad knees and a arrhythmic heart, he may be the last man in 2030 LA without a stcom implanted in his cortex. A 21st century Luddite with the skills of a gun-for-hire, he returns to take a case that's already left nine agents parted out.

The assignment takes him to a sea platform owned by the genetic conglomerate, Genesistems. His task: find Romy, one of the last surviving first-generation recombinants. Tall, slender, gifted, with a beauty as artificial as she is, Romy is the apogee of genetic perfection–and everything Karl loathes in a woman.

All Karl wants is to go home–but before he can he must smuggle Romy off the platform alive. Easier said than done. Genesistems wants them dead, a sadistic cabal murders Sisters two a night, and a 21st century demon lurks just out of sight, craving possession of them both.

Most alarming for Karl, as he grows to know the patented life form he has come to protect, his most charished prejudices teeter as his concept of what is human and what is not skews bewilderingly.