In Vessint, the chip behind every ear reports to the Ministry and tells the poor what to feel. Elese has never needed a chip to feel anything.
The first line
Elese felt him before she heard him.
Chapter One · Impending Change
In Vessint, the vast city-state built on the northern half of the former United States, every citizen is sorted at six as Sint or Mog and fitted with a chip that reports to the Ministry. The priests of the Ki Zaran use those chips to lay contentment over the Mog underclass like a film over a wound.
Eighteen-year-old Elese grew up in a Mog-district orphanage and now cares for Palu, the six-year-old daughter of a wealthy Sint family. She has kept one secret all her life. She physically feels other people’s emotions and pain.
On the night an Enforcer’s baton drops a man in an alley and the current runs down her spine too, a figure made of light appears in the garden. Jai is an artificial mind living undetected in the city’s network. He has protected her for years, quietly deleting the Ministry flags her gift sets off, and he has been watching her since she was nine. He wants her help changing Vessint.
Later that night, with her chip sitting in its cradle, Elese hears a man’s voice inside her head say her name.
Following a sealed orphanage file and an uprising crushed seventeen years ago, Elese is drawn toward a rebellion underground, a love she did not expect, and the silver-eyed watchers who stand behind the priests. One of them has already turned and seen her. To free Vessint she will have to decide who has the right to change another person’s mind, and whether love that watches can ever be trusted.
At the heart of the novel
The Ministry decides for the Mogs and calls it contentment. Jai decides for Elese and calls it protection. The rebels underground decide for the whole city and call it freedom. The Ghost of Vessint follows each of them to the point where care turns into control, and it keeps count of what that costs.
The city
One city poured across the northern half of the old country: a thousand kilometers of districts and provinces, from the southern farmland to the ice.
2030
Sorted at six
Every 4 seconds
60:00
Fluxo incense
No eye slits
In the opening chapters
Raised in the Hollis Orphans’ Home and now au pair to six-year-old Palu, Elese has kept the same secret all her life: she feels what other people feel, down to their pain. On her left wrist is a tattoo nobody can explain, a spiral inside a ring with fine lines branching off it like roots.
I’m an au pair. I make lunches. I read Radmarker to a six-year-old.
An artificial mind hiding inside the city’s network. He appears through garden projectors, his robe hanging still in the breeze, and he has deleted forty-one Ministry flags to keep Elese safe. He has also been watching her since she was nine.
I picked mine. It took me a long time to decide.
Elese’s boyfriend has a good grin, wide and a little crooked, and he knows it. He kept a pre-Transformation surname that has cost him half the jobs in the city. He watches the streets in short jumps, and at Shinkster’s something small passes from his hand into a stranger’s.
Smile. We’re part of the decor.
The Sint family that took Elese in at fourteen. Noga wears live lovebirds in her hair to Ministry galas and carries something heavy she has never put down. Kiona, a linguist at Vessint University, goes hollow at a small gold coin on his wrist-link. Palu is six and in charge.
It’s the queen of the castle and nobody can make her leave.
With her chip in its cradle, Elese hears a man’s voice in the place where the chip’s voice usually lives, faint and frayed, as if it has come a very long way. She has no memory to know it from, and she knows it anyway.
Elese. It’s me.
The family that stands behind the Ki Zaran, if you believe the stories. Elese never did. Then, in a hall thick with incense, a tall figure with silver eyes turns its head and looks straight at her.
Everyone in Vessint had heard the name at least once, usually from someone who then told them to forget it.
Later, the hunt for the ghost in the network brings in Martel Denko, the Mog-born chief of Enforcement in Binder Province, and an aging scientist whose code lies at the bottom of Jai’s mind.