Combining the inventive worldbuilding of Philip K. Dick and the elegiac longing of Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye and for fans of Ready Player One and Rabbits, The Halter by Darby McDevitt (lead writer for Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag) is a debut sci-fi novel that fuses cyber-noir, psychological suspense, and high-concept speculation in a breakneck search for truth inside a utopian metaverse on the verge of collapse.
Intrigued? Read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from The Halter by Darby McDevitt, which releases on February 17th 2026.
In a world where virtual addiction kills, Kennedy Stark is paid to pull the plug. A professional halter—part detective, part counselor—he trawls the world’s darkest surrogate-reality feeds in search of the lost. When he isn’t working, he’s dreaming of a one-way ticket to Mars, where a new colony has been established as a hopeful alternative to an Earth in the early stages of climate collapse.
One evening, after a botched rescue attempt, a mysterious client offers Kennedy a tantalizing new case: brilliant software engineer Delia Walsh, who Kennedy fell in love with years ago, has disappeared inside a surrogate reality project called The Forum. Entering under an assumed identity, Kennedy finds a simulation unlike any other. The Forum bills itself as a tool for cutting-edge scientific research and radical philosophical investigations, but the signs of its corruption are everywhere. As Kennedy investigates, he learns Delia had been working on a new simulation that could upend The Forum’s primary purpose, and that even in this prurient playground for the super wealthy, the dangers are very real.
Brimming with black humor, hardboiled attitude, and a cast of endearing misfits lost in brittle fantasies, The Halter introduces a charismatic detective and heralds a unique and assured new voice in sci-fi crime.
Chapter 1
I WAS STANDING OUTSIDE ROOM 601, waiting for another gunshot. The hotel’s exchange vents rattled on high, blowing summer trash reek into the stuffy hall. The only human sound was a muted moaning on the far side of the door. I reached for the knob and turned it gently.
The room I entered had an arctic theme—ivory whitewashed walls, a frosty shag carpet, bleached linen curtains. In one corner was a gray leather recliner, occupied by a bent wick of a man in a suit with a black crust of gelled-back hair. He slouched forward, holding a gun in his clawing hands. A weapon so large he might have torn it off a tank.
The swinging door hit the far wall and rattled. The man’s head snapped up. Splashes of blood and clots of gore covered his slender face. He raised the gun.
“Was it you?” he choked.
I shook my head slowly. “It’s never me.”
He gave the gun a sloppy flick, his finger kissing the trigger. I raised my hands and stepped sideways into the room, watching him carefully. Behind that radiant red mask was a young face with sharp angles and hollowed out cheeks. This was William Brighton—Billy—the man I’d been tracking for three weeks.
I took another step into the room. The pistol jittered. “Stop,” he said through a cage of teeth.
“Billy,” I said gently. “I’m here to help.”
He twitched, his own name slapping him like a wet hand. His lip trembled and his eyes got moist. A second later, his shoulders dropped, and he sunk back into the chair.
“What the fuck am I doing?” he mumbled.
Taking advantage of the pause, I closed the door and twisted the deadbolt and fixed the chain. I peeped through the spyhole and waited. A minute passed. Nobody appeared.
When I turned back, Billy’s eyes were closed, and he was holding the gun across his lap. A rosy chunk of viscera fell from his cheek onto the lapel of his jacket. He didn’t flinch.
I looked around. Across the room, a curtain fluttered in a light breeze. The window behind it was open to the sultry evening air and the gauzy fabric roiled like a creamy ocean surf. Wafting through was a sweet stink of garbage and piss. The curtain bucked and shivered. That’s when I saw Billy’s trouble—a stain of blood wicking up the curtain’s fabric from the floor. The source lay out of sight, obscured by the bed.
“Billy,” I said firmly.
He opened his eyes. I pointed at the bloody curtain. “You mind if I look?”
His vacant eyes vibrated. He swallowed and shook his head once and looked down at his bloody hands.
“It’s not my fault,” he whispered. “Of course not.”
I rounded the foot of the bed. The first thing I saw was a pair of dark leather loafers, toes askance and pointed at the ceiling. A supine slab in a tailored tan suit lay on the ground, arms at his sides.
From the shoes to the fine suit and the silk necktie, this was a man of means. His pinstriped fabrics and icy diamond cufflinks told a story of conspicuous wealth. But from the neck up, everything was a mystery. In place of his head was a moist, pulpy mash of seething matter with the form and colors of a half-eaten burrito, heavy on the hot sauce. His thinking days were done.
Beyond the body, a spray of bone and skin and clumps of black hair streaked across the carpet, as if the man’s head had erupted in the middle of a nap. I moved back to the bed and sat at the corner. Billy watched me without interest.
“Okay,” I said. “Walk me through this.”
Billy lifted his eyes to the ceiling, as if the words he wanted were etched in the stuccoed plaster. As he ruminated, he lifted the gun from his lap and set it on the ivory desk to his right. He sighed.
“I got a call last week. Some geezer on the city council, repping Staten Island. Married with four kids. Seemed straight as an arrow. Boring even.”
“I see where this is going.”
“Someone has videos of him doing filthy things on a farm in Quebec.”
“Blackmail.” “Yeah.”
“So why are we at a hotel in Manhattan?”
“I was sent here to negotiate an exchange. The video for money.” “That’s a little outside your job description, isn’t it?
“How do you mean?” “You’re a cop.”
Billy shrugged. “The money was good.” “So who fucked up here?”
His lip curled. “I came through the door. This meathead jumped me.”
“Why?”
He frowned and glanced at the pistol on the desk. “I don’t know. I guess the gun spooked him.”
“You came in hot?” “Wouldn’t you?”
“Not the best way to start a negotiation.”
He blinked a few times. “I was just being careful.”
I nodded and looked around the room again. From my vantage on the bed, I could see a sliver of the bathroom door. It was ajar with a mirror attached to the inside panel. From this angle I could see the bathroom sink and an overnight kit bag with some of its contents spread on the counter—a toothbrush, a bottle of cologne, a pillbox. This told a new story. The victim was a guest, not a goon sent to negotiate.
“How’d you know to come here?” I said. “To this room, at this hotel?”
“A phone call,” he said. “They sent me to the front desk. Told me to give my name to the concierge.”
He twisted sideways and fished a folded paper from his coat’s pocket.
“A kid at the front desk gave me this.”
He offered me the paper. Apart from some newly smeared blood, it was clean and crisp. I unfolded it. It was stationery with a watermarked monogram of the hotel. Below the header at the paper’s center someone had written a single number—109—with a thick-nibbed pen.
“Nothing else?” I said. “No name?” Billy shook his head.
“Just that. Told me it was a room number.”
I looked at the paper: 109. My gut fluttered. I was so surprised, I almost laughed.
“Billy, think carefully. What room are we in?”
“601,” he said, pointing at the paper in my hand. “Like it says.”
I looked at the number. 109. I turned the paper upside down. 601, but only if you missed the watermark. I folded the paper and handed it back and he dutifully tucked it away, not even curious.
“So what now?” I said.
“What now?” he scoffed. “It’s game over. I can’t come back from this.”
“Tell me what that means.”
“It means I’m done,” he said, pressing a hand to his forehead. “Gotta start over. From the beginning. Fuck me.”
“You’re upset maybe. At yourself. Or something else.”
He grimaced. “I’m fucking pissed,” he said. “I want excitement. I want a good time.”
“Does that look like a good time?”
He sighed and stuck a finger in the corner of his eye and fished out something to stare at. “I don’t know,” he said. “I just want to feel clever, you know?”
“You don’t usually feel clever?”
He stared at me in silence for a moment, thoughts swirling behind his eyes. If a coherent idea was forming, he shook it away.
“Are you supposed to be here?” he said.
I laughed once and slapped my thighs and stood. “Billy, everything is gonna be all right.”
“Yeah?”
“You’re going home a hero.” “How do you figure?”
I crossed back to the door to play the scene out.
“It’s obvious,” I said. “You came here following a lead, this man attacked you without provocation. Lucky for you, you got the better of him. End of story. And unless this guy has a badge too, you’re in the clear. Back on the clock tomorrow morning.”
His eyes twinkled with the first signs of hope. “That true?”
“Cops always win. I’m surprised I have to explain it to you.”
His eyes fluttered and a dim look of hope cracked his face. I’d pulled him back from the brink with a good story. Now was the time to take advantage of it.
“The first thing we’re gonna do,” I said, “We’re gonna take a break.
Get you back home.”
“Home,” he mumbled, like he was already in bed, all tucked in. “You okay with that? You ready to go home?”
He sniffed and dragged the back of his hand under his nose. Then he nodded.
“Sure, I could go home.”
I crossed to the white desk with the phone. Billy’s gun was within reach. I could smell burnt powder from the fatal shot.
“Your wife’s been asking about you,” I said brightly. “She’ll be happy to see you.”
His face went slack, and his eyes darkened. I saw it happen, but I didn’t really see it. I should have.
“My wife?” he said.
God, I should have fucking seen it. I lifted the phone and dialed an outside number. “Let’s give her a call.”
The phone rang once, then squelched dead. I looked down. Billy’s finger lay heavy on the switch, and his eyes were dark and empty. He leered at me, possessed by something ugly.
“I don’t have a wife,” he said flatly.
My gut twisted. Sure. I could go home. He didn’t mean his home outside, where his wife and three-year old twins were waiting for him, worried sick. He meant his home inside, to whatever dingy squat he was renting in this handcrafted, twentieth-century fantasy New York. He was fully invested, and there was no going back.
I lifted his finger from the cradle and laid it aside. “I’m messing with you, Billy. Let’s get room service.”
Billy didn’t answer. He rocked himself out of the chair and strode across the room. I laid the receiver back on the phone as I watched him.
“Billy?”
He walked to the corpse with a swaying nonchalance and stopped a few inches from its loafers, surveying his butchery with bored detachment. Then he pivoted to me. His slathered face bloomed with a pearly grin and wild eyes.
“Now I know what you are,” he said. “I know why you’re here.” “Can we talk?”
“I told you,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m starting over.”
He turned from the body to the billowing curtains and stared beyond the dark frame into the noxious seething of a humid, lamplit Manhattan.
“They say it doesn’t hurt,” he said.
My chest tightened. I lunged forward, my arm outstretched. I yelled Billy’s name. But he was too fast and too far away. The curtain rings rattled as he leapt through. In half a second he was gone, out the window and plunging through the night air.
I stumbled, almost tripping over the stiff’s legs. When I righted myself, I tore back the curtains and stuck my head out the window. Just in time to see the impact.
Billy’s body hit the sidewalk with a pulpy thud. A woman walking her beagle ten feet away shrieked and fell backward. The dog went nuts, snarling and jumping and biting the air. A few seconds later Billy’s broken corpse began to glow with a cool gray light. Trails of vapor curled up and away from the body like steam from a street vent. The glow reached its peak and with a soft flash the body vanished, leaving no trace.
The beagle’s barking cut short. It stopped moving and took a seat, mechanically placid. The woman climbed to her feet, mumbling a private curse. She swiped at her backside with an open hand and tightened the dog’s leash around her wrist and gave it a flick. Together they trotted off, ambling down 23rd as if nothing unsettling had transpired. As if a man hadn’t just slammed into the ground at terminal velocity an arm’s length away. As if Billy Brighton had never existed.
=
. . . Surrogate reality. Surreals. A beautiful portmanteau. Slang homegrown in the underbelly of an online forum for aficionados. A meme that generated its own center of gravity. Corporations hated the term. Hypo made a marketing push for Hypo Reality. Then Hypospace. They wanted the market for themselves. Like Hoover or Escalator or Band-Aid. Nobody cared. We just laughed. Pushback from the underground. Surreal was our word and we used nothing else. We guarded it fiercely.
The first surreals were pretty basic. Sensory explorations. No narrative, just experience. Hosted at dedicated venues in the early days. First one in Seattle was a place just off Pioneer Square, First and Jackson. Isn’t there anymore.
An early SR called Solar Winds was the first blockbuster. Wowed us like a communal lucid dream. We soared through interstellar night, jumping between eight planets and their moons. Orbiting the sun in real time. Full-scale replica of the solar system, but we could adjust our size for easy traversal. We started at one to one for contrast, then continued growing. At the one to five hundred scale, we towered above mountains and cities. Miles high in a few seconds. Kept growing. Up and up. Balancing on a suspended earth like it was a basketball in the void. We could fly around at will, zipping between planets. A sense of scale like nothing before. Poked our noses in Jupiter’s perpetual storm. Took showers in the icy mists of Enceladus. Sat in silence on Ceres like the Little Prince himself. Beautiful. Ten years after their debut, SR theaters started closing down. How quickly that format came and went. Commercial consoles took their place. Once we had them in our bedrooms, the mischief began. Sometimes we’d go phishing for morons with more money than brains. I even wrote an illegal sniffer to torment the assholes who harassed me and my friends inside. When the modding scene took off, we stopped bothering civilians. Cracking Hypo surreals wide open and rearranging them to satisfy our own ideas were more interesting. We made funny stuff at first. Running a wild west
surreal but we’re all riding dragons instead of horses. Or a spy thriller and we’re all packing Nerf guns. Or a cooking sim but the vegetables are the size of elephants. Good times.
It wasn’t long before we started thinking bigger. We took an interest in dynamic systems. Physics, weather, biology. How they interacted and overlapped. If the rain fell a little harder, would the hills erode faster? If the ambient temperature was two degrees higher would the rivers jump their banks? If a butterfly flapped its wings, that kind of shit. We felt powerful working with these variables. The deadly vastness of our understanding, pushing buttons and pulling levers. Changing the force of gravity. Altering the weak nuclear force. Tweaking the universal constant. Watching the world fall the fuck apart.
Then we’d put it back together.
The power of Gods in the hands of teenagers. What could go wrong? . . .
