Graciella “Stone” O’Leary just wants a chance. A chance to use her basketball skills and her powerful intelligence to make a better life for herself and her father. But after a night as a prisoner of the Martins, the richest and most powerful family in town, she learns the painful lesson that in the "Merit" world that exists after the Cancelled Election, her future is not hers to decide.

A descendent of Boudica, the rebel queen who took on the entire Roman Empire, Stone is unwilling to accept that her birth as a daughter of the Flats Ghetto makes her a slave—unlike her friend, Rizzo, who has been condemned to the debtors’ “Chain Gang.”

Like Boudica, Stone is willing to risk everything, even her own life, to bring death and destruction on the elites who control her world and repress everyone not born to privilege. Stone, Rizzo, and others who join them, will fight not just for the impossible dream of overthrowing the system, but to inflict on the "Merit" elites a righteous nightmare of blood, fire, and revenge.

Containing stunning spot illustrations by the author, this scintillating neo-noir near-future novella is acclaimed cartoonist and comics artist Ho Che Anderson's first work of prose fiction in over twenty years.


Illustrations and variant cover by Ho Che Anderson


Born in London, England, Ho Che Anderson was named after the Vietnamese and Cuban revolutionaries Ho Chi Minh and Che Guevara. Anderson began his career as the author of numerous graphic novels, including KING, a biography of Martin Luther King, the horror thriller, SAND & FURY, and the science-fiction action-adventure, GODHEAD. During this time he also wrote the children’s novel, THE NO-BOYS CLUB. After a two-year stint as a Toronto Star reporter, Anderson embraced a lifelong fascination with filmmaking. He studied film production at the Toronto Film School and Sheridan College, during which he was involved in the production of more than 40 shorts as either DP, camera operator, editor, writer, or director. One of those films, LOTUS EATERS, won best picture at the 2014 TFS Festival of Films and was an official selection at the 2014 ReelWorld Film Festival. Following film school he joined IATSE Local 667 where he worked for several years as a camera assistant on numerous shows including Reign, Taken, and Designated Survivor to further hone his skills. Anderson wrote and directed his first feature in 2018, the supernatural heist thriller, LE CORBEAU, for Canada’s Telefilm, and is currently in development on a second feature with Antigravity Entertainment. He is also hard at work scripting several graphic novels, among them another tale of the supernatural called, THE RESURRECTIONISTS, for Abrams Books.