In the far future human minds are controlled by computers. The powerful use direct read/write access to the human mind in order to exploit the weak. But in this darkness and misery there are robin hoods working in the shadows to help the poor and rob the rich of their human chattel.

Your friend Anthony was such a robin hood. He is a black market coder. He has restored memory and identity to slaves, and used his powers in other ways to help the needy and the weak survive in a world that wants to grind them into powder. Where corporations and the state put daggers into human minds, people like Anthony stepped in and repaired the damage.

But there is a dark side to running code on a human brain. Anthony needed a test subject. He bought a mind-wiped indentured woman, and it was on her mind that he ran all of his test code. It never felt right, but it was a necessary evil. Or so you told yourselves.

Now Anthony is gone. He has been arrested and he won't be coming back. You enter his apartment days later and discover that this woman, Beta, is still there. Dehydrated and weak, she will perish unless you take care of her.

And if you do so, you will learn the full price of Anthony's coding.

Set in the Digital Thought Control Universe, a near-future dystopia where brain-computer interfaces (BCI) are universal, contracts can mean indentured servitude, and minds can be rewritten. The metal device on her temple is a BCI port. Everyone has one.