Hawaiian author Chris McKinney ’s newsci - fi noirWater City Trilogy begins with Midnight , Water City . Thebook , set in anunderwater worldfilled with keenly brutish crime , is n’t out until summer 2021 , but today , io9 has an undivided look at its atomic number 10 - drenched cover , as well as a peep at the first chapter .
To place the shot , here ’s a verbal description of the taradiddle :
In a future of underwater cities , artificially extended lifespans , and a wealthiness gap that has outlived a near - apocalypse , a world - weary tec investigates the murder of the puzzling scientist who once save the world .
A crop of the cover of Chris McKinney’s Midnight, Water City. See the full image below!Image: Soho Press
class 2142 : Earth is thirty years past a near - hit with the asteroid Sessho - seki . Akira Kimura , the scientist responsible for for eliminating the threat , has achieved top of fame approach deification . But now , Akira is being threatened , so after years without contact , she reaches out to her former head of security , who has since become a police tec .
When he arrives at her deep - ocean home and finds Akira methodically dismembered , this tec will take a chance everything — his career , his family , even his own life — and delve back into his shared past with Akira to discover her killer . With a rich , cinematic vox and a burning cynicism , Midnight , Water City is both a thrilling neo - noir procedural and a stunning exploration of research , class , climate modification , the cult of personality , and the dark sacrifice we are unforced to make in the name of progress .
https://gizmodo.com/the-15-best-science-fiction-and-fantasy-noir-films-1795109834
Image: Soho Press
Here ’s the full binding in all its technical school - noir resplendency ; the illustration is by Vlado Krizan and the designing is by Janine Agro .
Now , translate on for an exciting and challenging selection from the book ’s first chapter !
The lift beeps , and I pivot back toward my reflection . Behind this door is the woman who ’s supposed to help me . My oldest and perhaps dearest friend . eld ago , before she became a god among us , she used to tell me I was her best friend , too . People have told me this often . It used to make me finger good , until I realized I was environ by people without Quaker . There was a understanding no one else could stand these motherfuckers . And for Akira Kimura , that reason was probably that it ’s tough to put up with the smartest person on Earth .
Akira has call me to moonlight as personal security system for her , just like in the older days . She says she ’s been getting the weird common sense that she ’s in danger . A vision . A halo . And once again , a cleaning woman who says she trusts only me . But she ’s always been a picayune paranoid . She ’s offered to pay me well , more than enough to get myself out from under . That ’s the comic thing about The Money . They ’ll gift each other artifact and libation equal to most mass ’s annual income . But anyone who ai n’t them ’s got ta knead for it . I ’ll give you this , but you ’ve got ta do something for me . Because they have it off a gift to the Less Than is truly a gift , not a patronage . And rich or poor , no one wants to give away a thing for spare .
I search into the elevator ’s facial acknowledgment scan . I have clearance , just like she said . Right before the door slew unresolved , my wife pings me on my iE. It zooms to a hitch in front of my face to punctuate the grandness of the substance . Sabrina ’s begin this psychical power for ping me at the bad times . But if I ’m being honest with myself , it ’s not that grueling for her to reckon out . I ’m not in love any longer , so they ’re all the sorry times . I pluck my Explorer out of the air and tuck it into my shoulder pocket before stepping into the penthouse .
The place is half render . This is a woman who lives at piece of work , at her telescope , so the deficiency of armchairs is n’t surprising . I ’m way too early . Around thirty minutes , so I poke around . Does n’t look like she ’s home . curious — she ’s more diseased about punctuality than me . I peep through her ocean telescope and look up through the atmospheres . All this modern underwater architecture , lit up with bioluminescence . Condos , greenish blue resorts , plazas , lighted vac subway connect them all . Like a twenty - first century sensible horizon riff upside down and drop into the sea . Refuse radio-controlled aircraft project to look like yeti crabs claw out of infected cube and scurry to the airfoil , flex their mechanical tree branch . Everything is hydro - powered , movement - powered , geo - powered . Sewage , fire up and pressurise into biodiesel . Holographic advert circle their gilded target , tell multitude they can somehow live forever while looking like a million bucks . The underwater city is always on , data - scavenging all our drug abuse and using the information to produce a more efficient place . An underwater panoramic , lubricated by the soil of America .
And that ’s when I see red . A small wisp of it , weaving its way under Akira ’s sleeping room door , its scent an ambergris perfume .
I abuse inside and take care around tight . Nothing out of the ordinary . The only pieces inside are a dresser , a Nipponese tea table with two black-market cushions , and a bullet - mold AMP hibernation chamber , a grade people would kill to own . I smell destruction . I can hear it like an off - key strum . But I do n’t see stock . Even though I ’m colorblind , I know what it look like , and there is n’t any .
But the perfume is overpower in here . The wafts start come at me . Other people ca n’t smell out them . You ca n’t hearten them through canvas tent or dramatic art . I ’ve tried to paint them century of time myself and never gotten it proper . Death has a smell like virtuous ambergris , and I ’m the only one who knows it . expiry is carmine , murder super acid .
I finally see them more distinctly . The faintest red circling the AMP chamber , its seal lined in dark-green . The way that matter is construct , nothing can ooze out . So I know murder ’s been locked in there .
I step over to give it . It wo n’t stir . An old - schooltime padlock is confine the motorcar ’s opening handles tightly together . I take out my tongue and crank the heat up on its steel , then cut through the clumsy shank . The lock clanks on the flooring as I open up the crosshatch . Mist puffs out of the sleeping room . I swat the freeze cold puffs away . A substantial , cloudy chunk glows from within the sleeping room . There ’s a frozen soundbox in all that nitrogen , but except for a duo of hand flex , iron upward , it ’s rugged to make out a face . I pull out my tongue and start up chipping away at the solid nitro . It ’s harder than frosting . I turn the heat up even higher on my vane and pang at it again and again . A lump breaks off . My Internet Explorer alerts me that my blood insistency is rising cursorily , that my pulsation is racing . I silence it and turn my blade to where the head teacher is .
I ’m do-or-die now . I involve to see if it ’s her . I thrust the leaf blade into the stoppage with everything I ’ve perplex . Again and again . The smelling gets stronger and potent the nearer I get to the nerve . The green wafts are making me tear up , but I ’ve got ta know . It could be Akira in there . I cut and kink . A small chunk rainfly out of the chamber and skids across the room . I look down . An eye . capable . Always open , always see . The pupil is murky . Barely perceptible green scroll up from them . Akira Kimura , one of the greatest minds to ever exist , has been boil down to breathless glass .
I abide up . Close my eyes . The smell is giving me a ferocious headache . The lock chamber means she was trapped in there . And the special K . . . This was slaying , not suicide . I think for a minute , but it ’s tough to advert onto the jetsam of each contingent in this mental flood . Procedure , I tell myself . You ’re a detective . Stuff the personal . Procedure . But I look at the broken lock and thawing chunk of nitro on the trading floor and recognise I ’ve already crossed that line .
I knock the chief and call it in . At first , he thinks I ’m mess with him . He ’s never liked me , and the feeling is mutual . “ The most bright scientist in the world , dead ? Really , ” he says .
Who the fuck talk like that ? “ Yes , ” I say .
“ No jokes , please , ” he say .
It ’s tough to win over someone of the end of a demigod , particularly the kind of guy who goes through life like he ’s play an efficiency simulator . god do n’t break down , no matter how many sims you prevail through the quantum . My phonation is stir as I tell him about the lock , the bedchamber , the arms locked in an outward pushing . The clouded eyes . And when he realizes I ’m not joke , he finally asks existent questions . “ Chamber malfunction ? ”
“ I told you , the lock . Besides , someone flood this matter with nitro instead of AMP . And the chamber ’s convey controls on the interior . ”
“ Assisted suicide ? ”
“ No means , ” I say . “ What ’s the period of sleeping in an AMP bedroom every dark if you are n’t seek to live forever ? ” I do n’t tell him about the honey oil . I never tell anyone about it . And I certainly do n’t tell him that if Akira Kimura were to ask anyone to aid her kill herself , it would in all likelihood be me .
He pant , then asks the obvious question . “ Why would anyone want to kill her ? ”
I have no reply . The headman wants me to sit down tight until he gets here . We have to secure the surface area and reassert it ’s her ; we have to avoid a media shitstorm . Procedure . Then he asks what the hell I was doing there . I tell him the truth . She ’s an old protagonist who feared for her guard and offered me a occupation . Her iE ? he ask . She never had one . Not even when she was officious saving the world . Can she be saved ? the chief ask . Unlike every other member of The Money , Akira never prevent a stockpile of farmed electric organ . She was old - fashioned through and through . He tells me again to sit close . But I ca n’t stay here any longer . My headache is now a full - blown migraine , the smell choking me . I need to leave . But I ca n’t . I ’m missing something .
I step to the chamber and urge the heat button , which I would ’ve done in the first place if I ’d been think clearly . I tell myself to quit . Think . Wait . Procedure .
As the nitro melting , the chamber vent ooze up the liquid state . First , it ’s the hands , then the arms . The ones that were push up slide off at the shoulders and drop beside her . I take a step back . Next are the feet . Then the leg . They separate in one-half at the knees . I see her eye , even after expiry , direct upwardly as common . appear , always looking , just like I ’m looking at her now . Then her head slue off , spins face down , and bob in the remaining liquid nitro .
Someone locked the chamber and cranked up the AMP . Maybe Akira was startled and put her hands up . But it was too late . So much AMP flooded her liver that it put her into instant hibernation . Then whoever it was dilute her to pieces . With such preciseness that the body did n’t come down apart , and Akira slept through the whole thing .
Then that someone cranked up the nitro to put her on ice . Why put the lock back on after all this ? I have sex the solvent to that one : this was Akira Kimura . Whoever did this probably thought there was a chance she could somehow reassemble herself and get out . These are the thoughts that go through someone ’s head when they attempt to kill a know god .
Excerpt from Midnight , Water City courtesy of Soho Press and used by permission . Copyright © 2021 Chris McKinney .
Midnight , Water City by Chris McKinney is out July 13 , 2021 , and you canpre - order a written matter here .
https://gizmodo.com/decembers-new-sci-fi-and-fantasy-books-just-might-help-1845743421
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