The Glass Eaters are a crew of twelve augmentation addicts in Cleveland who have crossed the line from users to something else entirely. Every member has at least four major augmentations, most installed in black-market chop shops, and they fund their addiction through a cycle of theft, violence, and increasingly desperate contract work. The name comes from their habit of consuming synthetic crystal compounds — street name 'glass' — that suppress augment rejection syndrome and produce a dissociative high that makes them feel unified with their chrome. The drug is neurotoxic over time. None of them care.

What makes the Glass Eaters more than a sad footnote is that several members carry military-grade augments acquired through unknown channels. The crew's founder, a woman known as Prism, has a full combat suite that would cost more than a Shelf apartment building — reflex boosters, subdermal armor, optical targeting systems, and a neural processor that runs combat algorithms in real time. Where she got this hardware is a question that several factions would like answered. The rest of the crew is less impressively equipped but still more chromed than any twelve people should be without corporate backing.

The Eaters take jobs nobody else will touch — operations that require a tolerance for pain, a disregard for personal safety, and the kind of augmented capability that makes up for terrible planning. They're shock troops for hire, battering rams that syndicates and fixers point at problems too dangerous for rational operators. Their success rate is surprisingly high. Their casualty rate is also surprisingly high. They replace losses by recruiting other augment addicts, which is never difficult in a city full of them.