Charon

When a shipwrecked stranger washed up on the beach near research scientist Samantha Bryton's home, she was unaware that he was something more than human. He said his name was Turner Pascal-but Pascal was dead, killed in a car wreck. This man only held the remainder of Pascal's consciousness in a technologically enhanced humanoid body. He was, in fact, an experiment by the notorious criminal Charon, a practitioner of illegal robotics and android research. Charon has been secretly copying human minds into android brains, with plans to make his own army of slaves. On the run from this most ruthless criminal, Samantha and Turner seek help from Sunrise Alley, an underground organization of AIs and androids that have gone rogue. But these cybernetic outlaws are rumored to have their own hidden agenda-not necessarily congruent with humanity's welfare.

Charon was the most ruthless-and brilliant-criminal of the twenty-first century, a practitioner of illegal robotics and android research. He is dead now, and General Thomas Wharington believes his team of experts has deleted all the electronic copies that the megalomaniacal inventor created of himself. However, one major problem remains: Alpha, the only android survivor of Charon's cybernetic empire. Outwardly indistinguishable from a human woman, Alpha has superhuman strength and speed, and perhaps even more deadly capabilities still unknown. Thomas' superiors want her dismantled and studied, but to Wharington, it feels like murder. He stalls for time, a move that could prove disastrous. Alpha escapes from an escape-proof compound, kidnaps Wharington, and takes him to one of Charon's hidden installations. Charon might be dead, but Alpha continues to carry out her late master's orders, and she refuses to elaborate on what those orders entail. Meanwhile, her behavior is becoming more human, or so it seems. Is she developing emotions and a conscience, or is she just learning to counterfeit them as a means of carrying out her enigmatic orders? And do those orders include Wharington's death sentence?