TOMORROW IS
COLLATERAL
A NOVEL BY RYAN BARCLAY

A CYBERPUNK THRILLER

TOMORROW ISCOLLATERAL

Time is money.
People are the collateral.

IN A WORLD THAT OWNS YOUR TOMORROWKEEP SOMETHING FOR YOURSELF ↓RELEASE / 21 NOVEMBER 2026
01 / THE DEBTMERIDIAN // FICTIONAL WORLD ARCHIVE

THE FUTURE ISN’T GIVEN.
IT’S REPOSSESSED.

You can sell
your tomorrow.
You can’t choose
who collects.

In a future London, the years ahead of you are something a company can own.

Mara Venn collects what people owe. She has learned to watch the numbers instead of the person.

Then a dying debtor speaks with a voice she knows. A voice she hasn’t heard in eleven years.

The machine reports nothing wrong.
For once, Mara doesn’t believe it.

Mara beside Cale and the extraction machine in an unfinished flat
CHAPTER ONE / THE QUIET MINUTE
“The old man had sold six years of his life for a kitchen he never finished.”
CONTINUANCE / THE HUMAN COST

What is a year
of your life worth?

In this world, a contract can turn a future into a balance sheet. Move the marker. Feel the scale of what disappears.

TERM SURRENDEREDFICTIONAL SCENARIO
06YEARS
APPROXIMATELY 2,190 DAYSOF AN UNLIVED LIFE.

Six years. One unfinished kitchen.

02 / BEYOND THE NUMBERSTEN GLIMPSES INTO THE NOVEL

A city built
on borrowed time.

Rain on the windscreen. Heat under the arches. Memories behind glass. Explore the visual world of Tomorrow Is Collateral.

03 / 10

The Red Market

ART FROM THE WORLD OF THE NOVEL
FROM CHAPTER ONE
“Eyes make stories.
Numbers make reports.”
BRANN / THE QUIET MINUTE
Tomorrow Is Collateral, a novel by Ryan Barclay — book cover
YOUR NEXT READ / INCOMING

Keep your
next Saturday.

21
NOVEMBER
2026

A cyberpunk thriller by Ryan Barclay.
Coming Saturday 21 November 2026.

PAPERBACK · HARDCOVER · KINDLE
The story starts before release day.

EXCERPT / CHAPTER ONE
TOMORROW IS COLLATERAL

The Quiet Minute

The old man had sold six years of his life for a kitchen he never finished.

Mara Venn stood beneath the bare wires where the ceiling lights ought to have been and watched rain crawl down the window. Tower blocks leaned through the grey beyond it, their upper floors lost inside cloud. On the counter, unopened cabinet doors rested against a wall the colour of old teeth. Each one still wore its price sticker.

‘Mr Cale,’ she said, ‘I need you to sit down.’

He was seventy if you trusted his face, fifty-eight if you trusted the Balance glowing above his wrist. Continuance trusted neither. Its estimate hovered in Mara’s lens: TERM REMAINING 02Y 11M 04D. ARREARS 06Y 00M 00D.

‘That maths seems unfriendly,’ Cale said.

Behind Mara, Brann wheeled the extractor into the flat. It resembled a hospital trolley designed by someone who had only heard hospitals described in court: white shell, black restraints, no soft edges. The machine chimed when it saw Cale.

Mara kept her voice level. ‘You received twenty-eight notices.’

‘Twenty-seven. One was addressed to a dog.’

‘Do you have a dog?’

‘Not since the kitchen.’

THE STORY CONTINUES / 21 NOVEMBER 2026