Tangle Hold

The narrative follows Thadeus Jadiver after a near-fatal sabotage of his automated bath leaves him horribly burned and fitted with synthetic skin by a robot-human surgical team. While recovering in a Venusian city he suspects an attempted murder and confronts the unsettling presence of advanced, sometimes dangerous technologies: untrustworthy service machinery, surgical robots, and a novel adhesive weapon that entraps victims by tightening with motion. The story examines the tension between mechanical precision and human judgment, the vulnerability of bodies to engineered devices, and the uneasy social order of a crowded off-world metropolis where policing, innovation, and personal danger intersect.