Slow River

Lore van de Oest wakes injured and without the identity implant that once connected her to an immensely wealthy family. Rescued by a woman called Spanner, she begins living beyond the protections and expectations that defined her previous existence. Safety comes with complicated dependencies, and the work available under a new identity exposes a different side of the society her family helped shape. As Lore tries to understand how she reached this point, memories of privilege, coercion and betrayal resist simple explanations. Rebuilding a life requires more than recovering her name. She must decide what parts of her inheritance to reject and how to form relationships that do not repeat its patterns of control.