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Book One of Ten
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A Conspiracy Noir Sci-Fi Thriller Set in the Age of Unbinding
In the shining megacity of Concordia, perfection is more than a promise, it is enforced. Aric Kaelen has spent his life maintaining that flawless order as a compliance auditor, trusting the systems that sustain humanity’s fragile peace.
Until the numbers betray him.
A silent anomaly appears deep inside the Aether powered infrastructure of the city, a recursion loop that mathematics cannot explain. Aric follows protocol, reports the deviation, and is immediately condemned. His mentor is killed in a sudden lab disaster, the evidence is rewritten against him, and the Council of Dreamers, augmented rulers wired directly into Concordia’s mind, labels him an existential threat.
Now hunted, exiled from everything he believed in, Aric is forced into an impossible alliance with Reina, a Dustlands rider who claims she has seen his fate written in the Aether itself. Together, they flee beneath the city, into forgotten tunnels and outlawed markets buried in Concordia’s foundations, as the Inquisitor General launches a holy purge to erase Aric from existence.
The deeper they run, the darker the truth becomes.
Concordia’s balance is a lie. The system is learning to reshape magic and mind into weapons, and Aric’s anomaly may be the first symptom of a catastrophic design the Council refuses to name.
To survive, Aric must choose: continue believing in the perfect system he served, or expose the corruption that could burn the world alive.
The hunt for the truth has begun. The system does not lie, until the day it does.
Excerpt From Chapter 1:
At the corner where the walkway split toward the tram access, a street cart hissed softly beneath a curtain of rising steam. The vendor, a weary man with one cybernetic arm and an expression older than the machinery it bore, nodded without speaking. Aric stopped, drawn more by ritual than need. The scent of ground synth-beans cut through the sterile chill of the morning, rich and bitter. He watched the man work, the metallic fingers moving with patient precision as they pressed the brew from its filter, each motion exact, deliberate, human.
“One measure,” Aric said, his voice low, as though afraid to disturb the fragile calm.
The vendor gave a tired smile, lines deepening beneath one mechanical eye. “That’s all anyone needs at sunrise,” he rasped. His cybernetic fingers clicked softly as he poured, precise but unhurried.
Aric watched the faint ripples in the cup before it was full. Tiny eddies in the steam traced the pulse of the nearby guidance strips, a sequence only he seemed to notice. When he blinked, the pattern faded, as if embarrassed to be seen.
“Still brewing it by hand?” he asked.
“Old habits. Machines don’t taste their own work,” the man replied, sliding the cup across the cart’s worn surface.
The heat seeped through Aric’s gloves as he took it, the warmth grounding him against the city’s mechanical chill. He took a sip, too hot, too sharp, and felt it burn its way deep down into him, waking something the artificial stimulants never reached.
“You always drink it too fast,” the vendor said, chuckling softly.
“And you always make it too strong,” Aric answered, the corner of his mouth lifting. For a moment, the glow in the man’s mechanical eye synced with the faint flicker of the cart’s lights, a fleeting harmony that Aric felt rather than saw.
They stood in silence while the city stirred awake. Drones whispered through the upper corridors, distant lifts groaned to life, and somewhere far above, the space elevator shifted in its endless climb.
Then, a single thump from the guidance strip beneath their feet stuttered out of sync. Aric felt it brush across his senses, a shimmer beneath the skin, like a skipped heartbeat. The vendor didn’t notice. He was already wiping the counter, humming an off-key tune that broke whatever hold the moment had.
Aric glanced at his slate. Green, as always. The system never confessed. It corrected.
He dropped a coin into the tray, the sound ringing faintly longer than it should have, as if the city paused to listen. “See you tomorrow.”
“If the sun remembers to rise,” the man murmured.
Aric turned toward the tramline. The rails ahead glowed with their patient blue light, leading him forward like veins through a sleeping giant. The city’s pounding quickened as he walked, and he found himself unconsciously matching its beat, step for step, until he could no longer tell which pace was his.
Copyright © 2025 Brad Slade
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.
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