Shania Lenton looked into the ReflectME window on her digital wall. She had her office door locked and to herself. The woman gazing back at her was the very picture of the cool, no-nonsense businesswoman, an image she had cultivated over the last twenty years. Twenty years of victories big and small. Some, she reflected, at heavy costs, looking at her naked ring finger. But success, especially of the scope she had achieved, demanded sacrifice.

Like a trip to the Undercity. But what she had acquired there was worth the breach in civic protocol. Shania opened an inconspicuous-looking micro-refrigerator bottle and shook a thin, metallic capsule into the palm of her hand. She scowled at the way her hand trembled.

The innocuous greeting chime of her personal Intra-Health advisor application reminded her why she was holding a Neuro-Fountain.

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