Dopamine By Mikhail Voloshin

“Have you lost your mind? They’ll kill you. Are you willing to literally bet your life on—”
“On my own technical expertise? Yes. Always.”

It was supposed to be just another software job. It wasn't supposed to involve dodging bullets, igniting explosions, out-driving hitmen, or bluffing his way through the dens of international crime lords. Danny's big brain has always served him well at a workstation or a soldering bench, but will he be smart enough to survive the engineering challenge of a lifetime?

Onetime computer whiz-kid Danny still dreams of making it big as an inventor and technologist in the "digital revolution". But when a fat-fingered email flub from tech investor Jason Tuttle destroys Danny's latest company, he takes stock of his career and realizes that that ship's long since sailed. Using some inconvenient information, Danny "persuades" Jason to give him another employment opportunity. But his new assignment may be much more than he bargained for.

Jason has his sights set on a small, highly secretive biotechnology company called Tungsten Medical Technologies. They've been impossibly tight-lipped about what they're developing in there, but Jason is willing to use any means necessary to find out. That's where Danny comes in. His mission: hack into Tungsten and steal their pharmaceutical research.

At first, Danny and his team of semi-competent geeks relish the chance to play-act as cybercriminals, but they soon discover they aren't the only ones interested in the inscrutable biotech firm. Their ill-timed computer shenanigans interrupt an armed break-in of the laboratory by the Russian mafia, and Danny lands squarely in the crosshairs of a local cocaine kingpin. He soon finds himself hunted by drug dealers and exploited by Machiavellian corporate moguls in a battle over a test tube of genetically engineered bacteria.

With the help of Tina, an amateur microbiologist desperate for professional recognition, Danny must use his technical skills to elude his powerful pursuers — and, with luck, even beat them at their own game.

Dopamine is a present-day cyberpunk novel — and a celebration of the fact that such a thing as "a present-day cyberpunk novel" is even possible. Featuring some of the most accurate and accessible depictions of computer hacking and biotechnology ever to appear in a work of fiction, Dopamine is a wild ride for anyone who marvels at knowing that the real world we live in today was once strictly the realm of far-fetched fantasy. Whether you're looking for a high-tech crime thriller; a meticulously researched diamond-hard work of science fiction set twenty nanoseconds in the future; or a subtle exploration of the complex interplay between the worlds we imagine and the realities we create, you'll find your drug of choice within these pages.