At 55, big city sleuth Sonny Busco is sinking deep into debt and distrust when suddenly he's thrown a lifeline. The chief assistant to a prominent university professor offers $2500 for safe delivery of a confidential briefcase to Santa Fe, NM. Sonny accepts, thinking it's easy money. That is until he learns of the case's contents: an amazing alloy called sentient steel. Soon, Sonny risks life, liberty, and property to keep the revolutionary invention from falling into a wicked whirlwind of men and women in black, whose mission is to secure sentient steel for what appears to be the other side. But in a city full of smog and cynicism, things are rarely what they appear to be.