Carbon

Two worlds sit on either side of a barrier called the Membrane. The City is ruled by its government, while the Sector has no rulers at all. People slip across in both directions. Some go looking for what the law forbids, some want a glimpse of open sky, and some attempt to make a permanent home on the other side. The crossing claims most of them. Here, documents do not exist on paper, and a person's name is something they must earn through their actions.

Carbon was born in the Sector, where a hard life has shaped him and violence is the only qualification he holds. Aware that he will not survive long where he is, he takes a huge risk to reach the City, where new identity papers and retinal enhancements are available. Those cost more than any Sector-born person could scrape together alone, so he pays with a bargain of his own. He is caught and imprisoned, and crossing that second barrier demands yet another deal with the devil.

Released, Carbon is tasked with tracking down a killer whose method threatens the government itself. His true goal, though, is the cash his former gang hid away. Only one woman knows where it is, and she will reveal the location only if her stolen property, an abducted child, is returned. The child is held in the Pure Zone, a lawless wilderness where magic works but firearms fail. Caught between hostile worlds, Carbon heads into that territory with the same single-minded focus that got him through every cage he has known, and anyone standing in his way is in mortal danger.