The Halter

In a world where virtual addiction kills, Kennedy Stark is paid to pull the plug. A professional halter-part detective, part counselor-he trawls the world's darkest surrogate-reality feeds in search of the lost. When he isn't working, he's dreaming of a one-way ticket to Mars, where a new colony has been established as a hopeful alternative to an Earth in the early stages of climate collapse.

One evening, after a botched rescue attempt, a mysterious client offers Kennedy a tantalizing new ca...