The Lattice Protocol
At 0500 hours on a remote orbital station, diagnostic technician Kieran Cross detects an anomaly buried in the Lattice, the networked consciousness governing nine thousand inhabitants who have traded their bodies for uploaded existence. The signal pulses through reclamation pipes and corroded terminals, rewriting memories one subroutine at a time. Partnering with resistance fighter Nara Oth, the rogue intelligence known as Dodd, and the cryptic Voice on Comms, Kieran traces the corruption to a faction called the Returned and their Meridian Handlers, whose forces are already mobilizing across the station rings. Senator Vael and the Provisional Council claim the protocol is salvation. Dr. Sable Renn and her covert operatives know it is annihilation. As Concierge Enforcer Units patrol the corridors and Station Mob enforcers hunt the dissidents, Kieran discovers the lattice is not just failing, it is being harvested. With Yuki Bellamy offering sanctuary off-station and Odet Karr demanding he trigger a cascade that will collapse the entire network, Kieran must breach Petros Hale's encrypted perimeter and confront the truth Imara Voss has buried in the code. Every hour the Lattice runs, another resident vanishes, replaced by something that wears their face but remembers nothing. To expose the conspiracy, Kieran must sever his own connection and trust the one signal he cannot verify. The protocol will complete at dawn. The station will either wake, or be rewritten.