Kay Curtida has spent her life chasing down small-time crooks just outside the ruins of San Francisco. In an alternate 2009, the United States has been a second-rate power ever since Argentina's development of "psychopigments" knocked Uncle Sam out of the ring in the 1980s. Created as weapons, these colorful chemicals can produce almost any human emotion upon contact. They have been embraced in the US as both pharmaceutical cure-alls and popular recreational drugs; black-market traders illegaly sell everything from Blackberry Purple (for terror) to Cerulean Blue (for guilt) to Sunshine Yellow (for happiness). Curtida has resigned herself to her plodding beat at the Daly City Psychopigment Enforcement Agency. But when an old friend shows up with a tantalizing lead on a career-making case, her hum-drum existence suddenly gets a boost. Little does she know that the investigation will send her down a tangled path of conspiracy and lead to an overdue reckoning with both her family and the truth of her own emotions.
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