Downstream: The Downstream Triad- Downstream Paperback

In 2269, you only own your mind.Everything else is corporate.Kris lives beneath the city, below the industrial platforms and corporate towers, in a place built from broken infrastructure, stolen power, and people the system refuses to recognise.Without an active identity thread, he does not officially exist.Neither does Alice, an escaped Companion engineered to belong to whoever paid for her.They survive by staying invisible. Kris scavenges abandoned buildings, steals information, and avoids Vanguard Security. Alice reads the emotions people try to hide. Together, they have built something neither of them was designed to have.A life.Then Kris witnesses the impossible: a Gardener, one of Vanguard's black-coated retrieval agents, is killed.The stolen data left behind may unlock the network Vanguard uses to track, classify, and reclaim everyone in the city. Destroying it could give Downstream a chance to disappear.It could also bring the entire corporate system down on Kris, Alice, and everyone reckless enough to help them.Kris is not a hero. He is a thief with a gun and a talent for bad decisions.Alice is not property. She is done being owned.And neither of them is giving the other back.Downstream is a character-driven cyberpunk thriller about identity, ownership, resistance, and the people broken systems decide do not count.