In college, roommates Birch and Angel coded software viruses, releasing their so-called “mustangs” into the wild of the Internet, for the adrenaline rush of skirting international law and beer bottle clinks for getting away with it. They lose touch after graduation, until the masters behind the most audacious heist in history threaten to kill them both.

No longer a game: Birch is the lead software engineer for a gaming start-up in Palo Alto on the cusp of a huge IPO. He codes gaming avatars that move, sound, remember and reason like humans, but are designed to kill for fun. When he decides to leave this toxic culture of fear, jeopardizing the company’s lucrative launch, his vengeful boss empties his bank account and hires a hitman.

This is no experiment: Angel joins a project for a black budget military-industrial operation in Los Alamos, creating an airborne drone network ostensibly for the military, but he discovers once inside, is really intended to seize control of internet access across the globe, stealing this basic need from all of humanity.

As Birch flees the west coast, Angel hides a lethal backdoor in the network code and sends the key, embedded in a mustang, to his old friend, not sure if Birch will ever receive it: do the needful. I hope i see you some day if i’m not dead.

No turning back: Birch and Angel each make a choice that lights a fuse, racing toward their common purpose until they arrive at the junction of greed, power, control, wonder, love and intelligence, a mixture that, when ignited, both destroys and creates.

In this thought-provoking work of speculative fiction, big business wears the uniforms of government and military so it can wield money, bullets and bleeding edge technology to seize and control basic human needs. If you can compel people to buy water, why not air? Debut author Jon P. Roth masterfully weaves together suspense, introspection, and high-stakes drama to create a narrative that is both captivating and thrilling.