“Why won’t I?” he asks, sneering.
I reach up and touch a finger to the side of my visor, turning the opaque screen transparent. The thin strip of glass covers both of my eyes, obscuring my identity. I am supposed to move through the world without leaving a trace. But I want these boys to remember me.
For my eighteenth birthday, I gave myself a gift: two small black tattoos. On my left forearm is a set of old-fashioned scales. And on my right is a sword.
Justice may not exist, but I certainly do.
“Because you wouldn’t be the first life I ruined,” I say.
I am a wraith—a creature of wires and ink, of rumor and shadow. I can do worse than kill them; I can tear at the foundations of their lives with a few taps on a keyboard.
I am the most dangerous person they will ever meet.
And I want them to know it.
Justin and his friend are utterly still, terror written in every line of their faces.
“Good,” I say, rising from my seat. “Glad we had this talk.”
2
Let’s back up for a second.
A couple decades ago, there was rampant identity theft. Conventional measures—passwords, two-factor identification, security questions—couldn’t deal with it. People wouldn’t pick up phone calls because there was a nine out of ten chance it would be a recording saying that “your social security number has been compromised, so please input your credit card…”
With voice-cloning apps, deepfake generators, and tech-savvy criminals, the scampocalypse began. It drained bank accounts, ruined lives, disrupted elections, and overwhelmed law enforcement. Celebrities hired entire legal teams to issue takedowns of deepfake porn—only for those same videos to reappear in a few hours. Phone companies scrambled to filter scam calls with little success. A bank attempted three-factor identification.
And then the vice president’s car was hijacked using a counterfeit recording of his voice.
After that, an inventor had an idea. What if we put our ID in a place that couldn’t be hacked or stolen?
Under our very skin.
Enter the era of electron-ink tattoos. Instead of fumblingaround in a purse or wallet for a plastic ID card, you could just scan the back of your hand. The tech itself was powered through the tiny electronic pulses of a heartbeat—so if someone tried to remove the tattoo through gruesome means, it would go dark, the information gone. The tattoos couldn’t be duplicated, as the ink was strictly regulated. Most DMVs quickly created a room for tattoo application, once the demand roared to life.
It took less than a decade for the technology to become ubiquitous.
I was first inked when I was six years old.
What I remember most was the smell: burning metal and diluted bleach. A whisper of cold cotton across the back of my hand. It was the bare essentials: my identity, my school, and my home address.
The process was quick—there were machines built to administer basic biometric tattoos with as little discomfort as possible. Pain flared in my hand, and I squeezed my eyes shut, burying my face in my mother’s shoulder. Afterward, we went for ice cream and the taste of strawberries banished the bee-sting discomfort that still hummed beneath the bandage. I wasn’t allowed to soak in the bath for a few weeks, to let the ink and nanotechnology fully set up.
There are still some holdouts. Tinfoil hat–wearing anti-technology cults, religious organizations, and a few people who prefer the paper and plastic of old ID cards. But these days, most people use tattoos. And for more than just identity protection. While the government-controlled electron-ink is the only one used for ID and social security, privatecompanies sell mods that will do almost anything: control your phone, lock your car, monitor your house, access your credit cards, check your body temperature, or even change the channel on your TV.
And for the most part, these new technologies work. Since the government began using electron-ink for their IDs, the number of frauds and impersonations dropped.
In a world where identities are written in flesh and blood, it’s harder to slip between the cracks.
But not impossible.
And thus, the Identity Security Division was born. It was given autonomy and funds to track down identity fraud—and on paper, it’s a boring office brimming with agents that couldn’t get jobs at a more exciting alphabet agency.
But the ISD is far, far more dangerous than most people know.
Because they don’t just track identities.
They create them.
