A disgraced grounder cop. A synthetic partner. An assassin who can wear any face.High above a ruined Earth, thirty million citizens live in luxury aboard the floating sky-city of Metrofloat New York.

But when the most powerful oligarch on the ruling council is assassinated—his brain surgically removed to hide his secrets—the authorities are left with nowhere to turn.Desperate for answers, they reluctantly recall Detective Matthew Heart, a "whole-body" human exiled to the blighted ground years ago. Forced to partner with Sergeant Elizabeth Stanton, a fully synthetic MetPol officer struggling with her lost humanity, Heart must untangle a conspiracy that reaches the apex of the city's elite.On the ground below, a flesh-eating plague forces survivors to trade rotting limbs for scrap cybernetics.

In the sky above, power and greed rule unchecked. To stop the killing spree, Heart and Stanton must hunt a ghost across both worlds—a shapeshifting assassin with an impossible alibi:He’s already dead.In a world where memories can be extracted, flesh can be replaced, and faces can be stolen, the only thing deadlier than the truth is the price of digging it up.