The rain in New York didn't wash things clean — it just made the grime slicker. Jack Corbin stood under the awning of his office building on 42nd Street and watched it fall in sheets of neon-streaked gray, thinking about the seven adults who had disappeared in the last month and wondering if this was the eighth night he'd be out this late.

It was. Of course it was.

Jack had been forty-two when the Neutrino Blight hit. He'd been a private investigator with a divorce, a gambling problem, and a liver that was slowly giving up on him. The Blight made him twenty-five again — not just in appearance but in biology. Every cell in his body had been reset. His liver was healthy. His joints didn't ache. His vision was 20/20 for the first time since he was nineteen.

It should have been a miracle. It felt like a curse.

Because while Jack's body was young again, his problems hadn't been. His wife had left him before the Blight and wasn't coming back after it. His gambling debts hadn't been wiped by cosmic radiation. And the people he was hired to find had disappeared regardless of their age.

The latest case had brought him to OmniCorp Tower, the tallest building in Manhattan and the headquarters of the corporation that had quietly taken over law enforcement in the adult-free world. OmniCorp wasn't officially in charge — the New York Council of Youth was the official government — but everyone knew who really ran things.

Jack had been hired by the mother of a seventeen-year-old boy who'd gone missing three weeks ago. The boy, Marcus Webb, had been working as a data analyst at OmniCorp. He'd sent one message to his parents before going dark: "They're not what they seem. Tell my mother I didn't run away."

The security desk at OmniCorp Tower was manned by a girl who couldn't have been older than nineteen. She smiled at Jack with the practiced warmth of someone who'd been trained to be unfriendly without being rude. "I'm sorry, Mr. Corbin. We don't have a Marcus Webb on staff."

"That's odd," Jack said. "His mother says he worked there until three weeks ago."

"She says a lot of things." The girl's smile didn't waver. "I can check the records, but I should warn you — OmniCorp doesn't share employee information with the public."

Jack leaned forward. "I'm not asking for employee information. I'm asking for the location of a missing person."

The girl's smile flickered. For a fraction of a second, Jack saw something in her eyes that was fear or maybe recognition. Then it was gone, replaced by the practiced mask. "I'll check," she said.

She didn't come back. Instead, a man appeared behind Jack — tall, dark-haired, wearing the kind of suit that cost more than Jack's annual income. He introduced himself as Agent Cole, and his smile didn't reach his eyes either.

"Mr. Corbin," Cole said, "I understand you're looking for someone who doesn't exist. I'd suggest you stop looking."

Jack turned. "That's not how this works. I find people. It's what I do."

"Not anymore," Cole said. "You used to find cheating spouses and runaway teenagers. Now you're asking questions that have answers you don't want to hear."

"What answers are those?"

Cole leaned closer. His voice dropped to a whisper that barely rose above the sound of the rain. "The Blight wasn't natural, Mr. Corbin. The adults who died — they were supposed to die. And the people who are disappearing now? They were supposed to disappear too."

Jack felt something cold and familiar settle in his stomach. It was the feeling he got when he was standing on the edge of something dangerous and knew he should walk away. He didn't walk away.

"Who's supposed to?" he asked.

Cole's smile returned, thin and humorless. "That's what you're going to find out. Or you're not. Either way, you should stop asking questions."

He turned and walked away, his footsteps echoing on the wet pavement. Jack watched him go, then looked up at the tower — glass and steel reflecting the neon signs like a mirror reflecting a face you don't recognize.

He went back to his office and pulled out his old case files. Seven adults who had disappeared in the last month. All of them had worked at OmniCorp at some point. All of them had disappeared within forty-eight hours of asking questions about the Blight.

Jack sat down at his desk and lit a cigarette — one of the few vices he hadn't kicked when the Blight made him healthy enough to care about his lungs. He stared at the smoke rising from the tip and thought about the signal that had come through the radio telescopes three days ago.

A signal from space. Simple, mathematical, impossible to mistake for natural phenomena. It had said one thing, repeated in an endless loop: "You have passed the first gate."

OmniCorp had tried to suppress the news, but you can't silence the truth when it's broadcast on every frequency in the galaxy. The youth government had been thrown into chaos. The public was scared. And OmniCorp was moving people — fast.

Jack took a drag and stubbed out the cigarette. He had an address now. The last known location of Marcus Webb was a warehouse in Brooklyn that OmniCorp had leased under a shell company. It was a stupid address — too obvious, too easy to find. Which meant either Marcus had been careless, or someone wanted him found.

Jack grabbed his coat and headed for the door. The rain hadn't stopped, and neither had he.