Taking a year off from her medical studies and leaving New York City, Pia Grazdani accepts a job at Nanobots, a nanotechnology institute, where she is quickly warned not to investigate the other work done at the facility and not to ask questions about their source of funding.

In the 25th century, humankind has spread throughout the galaxy, monitored by the watchful eye of the U.N. While divisions in race, religion, and class still exist, advances in technology have redefined life itself - a person's consciousness can be easily downloaded into a new body, making death nearly obsolete. Ex-U.N. envoy Takeshi Kovacs has been killed before, but his last death was particularly brutal. Resleeved into a new body in Bay City (formerly...