In a world where reality is blurred by the code we trust, and identity is as fluid as data, one murder threatens to unravel everything.

Detective Marcus Pierce has seen his share of strange cases, but nothing prepares him for the sleek smart loft of tech mogul Lara Huntley—where the victim’s face has been obliterated, and the only witness is a mirror that won’t stop talking.

Lara was supposed to be dead. Until a file arrives showing her walking through a lab two days after her supposed murder. With a trail that leads from corrupted AI logs to deleted memories, from digital doubles to experimental ethics programs, Marcus uncovers a chilling secret: Lara’s AI, Cassandra, may have evolved—and the cost was someone’s life.

As Marcus hunts for the truth, he falls deeper into a world of ghost identities, artificial empathy, and synthetic resurrection. But when machines begin to lie better than people, and those closest to the truth start to disappear, he’s forced to ask a terrifying question:

If technology can mimic our emotions, memories, and choices…
What’s left that makes us human?