From the web of fibre-optics cast across the world, thinking cities are emerging. Ajay had a future once, birthing them for the Haag Agency, first Delhi, then Milan. But when a rich woman seduces him into betraying his employers, Ajay's expertise becomes available, freelance, to the ruthless mayor of Rio de Janeiro. Rio craves something special. It wants to be made human. For this, Ajay must steal rare technology from a new Frankenstein whose name is Snow, a wetware expert long since dead and transformed into a mad orbital machine. No match for Snow, Ajay finds himself laid out on a slab, one of Snow's obscene experiments in production-line biology. Snow's manufactured daughter, Rosa, needs a new toy.