Seven European stock markets crash in synchronized waves. CIA financial analyst Jake Castellano has been tracking a ghost frequency in global trading data for months. Tonight, it has gone live: markets, power grids, and air traffic control seized and released in perfect forty-seven-second intervals. Someone is proving they can command critical infrastructure at will.
Jake's investigation collides with journalist Sarah Winters, who is chasing the same story from a different direction. Forced into an uneasy alliance, they begin to trace the attacks to their source — and discover that the system behind them was designed with a single inviolable principle: once launched, it cannot accept human intervention.
Not even from the person who built it.
As the window closes on three continents, Jake and Sarah have forty-eight hours to stop something that was engineered to be unstoppable. Every move they make has already been anticipated. Every ally they find has something to hide.
The system is working exactly as intended. The question is who — if anyone — it was built for.
Full manuscript available upon request. The author is an established Penguin Random House author with active media presence across CNBC, Bloomberg, NPR, and more.