THE EXTRACTIONIST

In her breakout technothriller, virtual reality and video game expert Kimberly Unger expertly weaves the story of a disgraced underground hacker whose latest contract throws her into the middle of a corporate power struggle, causing her to fight for her life in both the real and digital worlds.

Eliza McKay is an Extractionist: an expert in the virtual reality space where people's minds are uploaded as digital personas. When wealthy or important people get stuck in the Swim for reasons that are sleazy, illegal, or merely unlucky—it's McKay's job to quietly extract them. A job that is becoming much more dangerous.

After McKay repels an attack on her Swim persona, hired thugs break into her house to try to hack her cybernetic implants. Meanwhile, the corporate executive she was hired to rescue from virtual reality is surprisingly reluctant to be extracted. Something is lurking in the Swim, and very powerful people will stop at nothing to keep it secret. This job might be the big break McKay has been waiting for—if she can survive long enough to beat the hackers at their own game.

Kimberly Unger is the acclaimed author of the virtual reality science fiction thrillers Nucleation and The Extractionist. She is a video game programmer and lectures on the intersection of art and code for the University of California Santa Cruz.