She was not an unassuming woman, by any means. She was tall, taller so with heels, which she almost always wore unless she was going to bed. Her long fingers never looked right without a few heavy gold rings. her hair -- bright white -- was either straightened to perfection, or done up in elaborate styles only capable of staying up by the grace of God, and Kayla, her hairstylist and best friend. And, popular to contrary belief, and the profession of half the women her age in New London, Marija was not a lady of the night.

Her latest arm candy took the form of Gerard Laybass, a wealthier man who lived in the West End, and financed absolutely nothing of hers. The power came from the assumption that he did. Marija had once been brilliant, a sparkling enigma of the limelight, and her cutting beauty was part of the effect. She'd learned long ago that most people's egos were architecture: intricate, expensive, and fundamentally load-bearing. Push at the right pillar, and the whole thing collapsed: and she was learning Gerard's weak spots with rapid success.

They were at the Neon Orchid, a club in the Lower Districts that catered to the kind of wealth that needed witnesses. Gerard's hand rested on the small of her back and Marija sipped her drink and smiled at a passing venture capitalist, letting him see the flash of recognition in her eyes before looking away. Let him think they'd met somewhere important. Let him spend the next hour trying to remember.

The con had been running for three months.

Gerard was developing a biotech algorithm in his penthouse labs, the kind of thing that threatened governments and cartels alike to the point of cooperation. He'd mentioned it once, carelessly, after his third whiskey. Marija had nodded thoughtfully, the way she'd seen brilliant women do, and asked him to explain it again. She'd recorded everything: her memory was her strongest weapon, honed since age seventeen with a higher destruction power than any artilllery could dream of having. She would sell that algorithm to the Syndicate in a week. They were already interested; she'd had Kayla drop hints through the right channels. By the time Gerard understood what had happened, Marija would be on a transport off-world with new teeth, new retinas, and new name.

The venture capitalist was still watching her across the room.

Marija stood, excusing herself to the bathroom. In the mirror, her white hair caught the fluorescent lights like spun wire. The gold rings caught too, throwing tiny rainbows across her knuckles. She looked like old money, like inherited taste, like the kind of woman who'd never had to scrounge a day in her life. That was the real con, she thought. The one she performed on herself, every morning, every time she caught her reflection.

She'd been brilliant once.

That part was true. Before she'd learned that brilliance alone didn't keep the lights on in New London, not unless it belonged to a man, and she had dissected and reassembled herself so many times at their behest that the con had become her baseline. She was brilliant. Everyone could see it. They just thought it belonged to someone else.