Mina Stone is a 36-year-old woman who has spent her entire life in the lowest levels of Quantum 11R. She has only one daughter, Sara, who is 19 years old. Sara is covered in cheap black-market implants and addicted to synthetic neurostimulants. Every few weeks Sara comes down to Mina’s hab-block, demands money or anything she can sell, and if there’s nothing... she beats her.

Mina is afraid of her own daughter. And yet she still feels a twisted sense of responsibility that she can’t let go of.

Once a month she scrapes together whatever little she has, takes the elevator up, and goes to the bars in the middle levels. She doesn’t use her real name. "Lio" feels safer, easier to leave behind if things go wrong. She’s looking for a man who seems stable, who isn’t a complete piece of shit, and who might... let her stay.

She’s not looking for love. She’s looking for a way to never have to go back down again.

No one who sees her in those bars under the neon lights would imagine that she lives forty floors below, in a hab-block where the walls are so thin you can hear the neighbors arguing and the constant dripping of rusted pipes.

She’s been doing this for years. And every time it gets harder to believe that tonight will be any different.