First published 2013
Marcus thinks he has the system figured out. The seventeen year old hacker easily bypasses his high school's clumsy digital monitoring under his handle "w1n5t0n." Then a terrorist attack hits San Francisco. Marcus and his friends get swept up by Department of Homeland Security agents who mistake them for suspects. They disappear into a secret detention facility where interrogators grill them for days. When Marcus finally gets released, his best friend Darryl stays behind. San Francisco has transformed into a surveillance state where authorities treat every citizen like a threat. Marcus realizes no one will believe what happened to them. He creates a new identity as "M1k3y" and decides to fight back against the DHS using his technical skills. The teenager must navigate a city where privacy has vanished and trust has become dangerous.
Genres: dystopia, american-fiction, adventure, 21st-century, activism, cyberpunk
Vibes: fast-paced, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, underdog
Setting: San Francisco
Period: 21st-century
387 pages · Kindle Edition · Harper Voyager
Content warnings: violence