Nora's Dad's vape lung worsens while Nathan, his friend Luke, and Dylan, an uploaded teen whose body is not keeping up with his age, visit a hacker's market in cyberspace.
Tropes:
- Conspicuously Light Patch: The passage to the Grey Market is through a hedge. The exact spot is pretty obvious and glitchy.
- Cross Player: Luke hits on an Asian-looking avatar which is revealed to be controlled by a teenage boy.
- Description Cut: Nora tells her dad that she found somebody and he asks her if she can count on him. She nods. Cut to Nathan having lost Dylan at the Grey Market after having promised to her to look after the boy.
- Foreshadowing: Dylan's puberty hack takes place in the form of a XX tattoo in his arm, XX is the female chromosomes, which ends up with him getting the body of a woman when it takes effect.
- Gender Bender: In an attempt to update his avatar to his chronological age, Dylan has a black market "puberty hack" installed. It works but, because he didn't think to check what sex the patch was designed for, it also turns him into a young woman.
- Immediate Self-Contradiction: At the couple therapy session, Ingrid denies controlling Nathan's every move at Lakeview. Cue his pants changing into the skinny jeans she ordered and her squeeing out about it.
- Oblivious Mockery: Nora talks to the technician at the upload scanner about the corrupt files in Nathan's db. He blames the creator of the avatar for any damage and calls them "low-wage clowns". There's an awkward moment when Nora tells him that it was her creating the avatar.
- The Promise: Nathan promised Nora to take care of Dylan while she is looking after her dad at the hospital. He then breaks the promise by taking Dylan to the Grey Market where the boy gets accidentally gender-bendered. Nora is predictably upset when she finds out.
- Wretched Hive: The Grey Market, where everything goes.
