Ten years ago, ten desperate people signed contracts for a "national drug trial."
An old-town thug who couldn't keep his accounts straight, an expelled student, a bit-part actor who'd been stuck for ten years, a tower-crane worker with a broken leg, a girl waiting to die, a courier risking his life to pay off debts…
One injection later, the dumbest man in the city became "President Shen," a man who could plan for every contingency. The others became, in their own ways, the father of AI, an award-winning actor, a human CAD system, and a ruthless hunter of capital.
It took them ten years to understand: the contract wasn't after their lives, but the brains that had grown sharper. And every person who'd brought them into the program had their own hidden agenda…
Each of them had a retrieval date marked on them. What was to be harvested was their modified brains, and their children.
Eight top-tier minds, eight ticking countdowns, forming a revenge alliance that could barely stand one another.
Intelligence was a life borrowed. It had to be repaid, but they would decide how.
