Halo Burn
After her neural halo begins to bleed static, Cassia Vex wakes in a back-alley clinic with a debt she can't pay and a name on a kill-list she didn't write. The Sovereign wants the halo-protocol she carries, the same implant her sister Talia once used to vanish without a trace, and the only people who know why are already dead, or worse, still pretending to be friends. Through a trail of flashbacks, betrayals, and narrow escapes, Cassia drags her glitching neural interface through corporate safe-houses, blackout districts, and the half-lit rooms of a resistance cell led by Senna Vale. Every step forward cracks the halo tighter. Every memory the Sovereign pulls from her skull drags Dr. Casimir Lior's old warnings back to life. Dorian Quill trades secrets for survival. Marlow Strake resurfaces from a past Cassia swore she'd buried. And somewhere in the static, a strike-officer is closing the net. To free Talia, or finally mourn her, Cassia must let the halo burn all the way through, knowing the protocol that defines her might be the very thing the Sovereign needs to own every mind in the city. The cost of choice is identity itself.