The Extractionist, by Kimberly Unger, was published in 2022.
I bought it from Couth Buzzard Books, in Seattle.
Eliza Nurey Wynona McKay is in a coffee shop in Singapore, waiting to meet with her next client. Discretion is important in her line of work. “Nobody ever wanted to admit a boss or family member had gotten themselves trapped in a virtual world.”
The Client arrives. She evades McKay’s request for her name. They make small talk. The overlays in McKay’s view tell her that the client is already lying. “I need an extraction done, here in the city…” the client begins.
McKay senses that something is wrong. She manages to lock down the electronics in her head, and get herself safely across the street, before the EM pulse goes off inside the coffee shop. If she had still been at her table, it would have been a digital death for her.
Later, in her 35th floor hotel room, McKay in not surprised when the Client shows up. Her overlays tell her that the Client is in the lobby. McKay had hacked into the hotel’s registration and had added a check-out time to her hotel record – to erase it completely would have been too suspicious. The Client isn’t fooled. McKay traps her in the lift. McKay also locks down the three hackers the Client brought with her. She hacks into the Client’s records, but comes up with no results. Is this client connected to one of the Big Three intelligence agencies?
The Client says McKay’s name out loud. She says that the EM pulse was not her doing. McKay releases the lift and invites the Client up to her room.
McKay manages to get the Client to tell her her name. It’s Brighton. Ina Brighton.
Brighton tells McKay that she’s part of a five-person team handling abuses of the technology. Mike, their project lead, went undercover in the Swim to meet with an informant. He’s been there for two weeks.
McKay knows that two weeks is a long time to leave a body plugged in.
Mike’s digital persona is here in Singapore, but his body is not. McKay has never done an extraction like this one.
This could be an interesting job.
McKay soon finds herself under attack, in both virtual and physical ways. She’s attacked by Brighton’s hackers, the Singapore Police, and by unidentified persons. McKay has firewalls and anti-virus software to protect her cybernetic implants against wireless attacks, but nothing prepared her for the thugs who broke into her house and are trying to plug in directly to the sockets in her skull. McKay doesn’t know it yet, but the attacks on her are going to get worse. Who is behind all this, and what are they after?
This is a fast-paced cyberpunk thriller. It’s also thick with detail and cyberspeak. I took my time reading it. (Depending on your point of view, this is either an advantage or a disadvantage of owning a book that doesn’t have a return date back to the library.)
I enjoyed the world building. Nanomites repair the circuitry in your head, change your hair color, repair cuts and bruises, and scrub your floors. A flashing icon on a paper cup tells you when your coffee is too hot to drink. Public access ports have privacy screens and provide sanitary wipes for the jacks.
I loved the descriptions of the Swim – the online world. It made the concept feel physical, digital, and organic at the same time.
I loved the unexpected moments of humor that occurred. There’s a law firm named Nebuchadezzar, Warloc, and Schmidt. McKay thinks: “They must have gone and found some poor kid with the name Warloc and sent him to law school just to get that level of badassery in the partner name.“
Eliza Nurey Wynona McKay is a fascinating protagonist. She’s a flawed character in the classic cyberpunk noir tradition, but she’s never a cliché.
The job McKay takes on is full of twists and surprises.
I loved this book.
This book is the winner of the 2023 Philip K. Dick Award.
Feeding Squirrels On My Way To Work 