Cassandra learns that her coworker Hehua has been murdered. They'd worked at a management consulting firm in Toronto. Cassandra admired Hehua for her refusal to be anything less than herself: Hehua was openly against "Edits," operations that people can undergo to remove undesirable parts of their personality or past experiences, such as trauma and anxiety. Shortly before Hehua's murder, Cassandra had had a falling-out with her. Hehua had started dating a married executive at their firm, Travis Swanson. Swanson was a Wonder Kid: a member of the upper echelon of genetically modified individuals in their world. It cost significantly more to achieve the level of utmost perfection associated with Wonder Kids than to undergo a singular Edit, but the downside of Edits was that they could often go wrong, producing glazed and emotionless individual. During her affair with Swanson, Hehua edited herself to get rid of her Mandarin accent and become proficient in English. As a side effect, she lost all of her Mandarin ability and seemingly became someone new, leaving Cassandra feeling like Hehua edited her out of her life as well. In mourning and feeling guilty because she'd ignored Hehua up until her death, Cassandra begins investigating what could've happened to her friend. The facts don't add up: Hehua, always frugal, was said to have strangled herself with a Prada bag. Cassandra suspects that the murder was Swanson's fault, but the detective in charge of the case assures her that Wonder Kids cannot commit murder. One day at work, Swanson tells Cassandra that they arrested someone for Hehua's murder, a kid that had been driven to insanity after an edit. Visiting her imprisoned father, who absolutely abhors edits and all the like, Cassandra comes across a relative of Hehua's suspected murderer, who pledges his innocence. She realizes what she has to do. Cassandra accepts Swanson's earlier invitation to go out and receive an Edit to remove her traumatic experiences from memory. She comes equipped with a knife in hand, but Swanson suspected that she would pull something, and proceeds to beat her. Luckily, the detective that Cassandra had spoken to had been trailing Swanson and was there to rescue her. Ten days afterward, the detectives comes to visit the injured but okay Cassandra, who plans to quit her job. He tells her that Hehua's murder is still blamed on the boy, not on the malicious Swanson, leading Cassandra to recognize that the case is not even close to being over.