Her Gilded Voice

Lacey has a woman living inside her head ... or is it the other way around?

Decades from now, technology has advanced, and everyone has a ’neuro-net’ wired into their brain. This provides each person with a ’voyce’ inside their head that offers advice that guides and ostensibly protects them; as teen Lacey Clarke puts it: ＂Voyces help us all make the right decisions. They give us reason, protect us from outside chaos. And in some cases, they protect us from ourselves.＂

In this republic, Lacey and her older sister, Yadira, barely make ends meet. Their lives are made worse when they discover they must pay off their late father’s debt and that Lacey has been marked to become a Puzzler in a brainteaser competition in which losers are killed. Alina, Lacey’s voyce, reassures her everything will be fine if only they follow the rules, but when an encounter with Ogden Oliver, a powerful Elite, ends with Alina being temporarily deactivated, Lacey is left alone with her own thoughts. For the first time in her life, she is able to perceive the world as it actually is - without augmented-reality illusions.

As Lacey navigates the competition, she realizes she may be a pawn but one that has hitherto unknown power.

Cover art: Paramita Bhattacharjee & Troy Edward Nikolic