Hope/Less — Ann Christy

Ella is an excellent private investigator and she's got one heck of a case on her hands. PePrs are disappearing, falling completely off the grid with no way to recover them. The number of disappearances has grown so high that disturbing rumors are beginning to circulate. The worst one for the humans is that the underground has finally reached the city. The very notion of escaping PePrs, left to their own devices, and quite possibly looking for payback against their less-than-kind owners, is making the humans jumpy.

And that makes those humans willing to hand over a very big paycheck if Ella can find the underground. More if she can break the system that is funneling all that sentient property out of the city. Ella's boss is eager for that paycheck, but when he calls her into the office one day to give her the worst news possible, she's no longer sure which side she should be working for.

As Ella and her new trainee â€" a sex-bot reject with no sense whatsoever -- scour the city and follow a tantalizing trail of clues, everything she thought she knew about the world is called into question. If she's not careful, it could also mean the end of her existence…or an entirely new beginning.