On the Darknet, no one knows you’re…

2011. Undercover as a consultant in the gig economy, Finn trades in the spoils of the new century: stolen IP. He returned from Japan last year, a 23-year-old Darknet impresario with Yakuza ties, ink, and an MBA from a prominent university.

alias: APHID GRIN

Finn hooks up with Chloe, a fashionable grad-school dropout with a trust fund. She draws him into a social scene he’s only glimpsed from the college-bar sidelines, rubbing elbows with the City’s elite; but when a foiled heist leaves him scrambling for cover, he loses himself within his rising celebrity as “Gigi,” young society’s latest It-girl, unsure of the way back… or a way out.

For intrepid connoisseurs of genre-crossing experimental fiction, Die the Villain is the tech-noir of our pre-Snowden yesterday and the underpinnings of our Dystopian now.