Caroline

The political divide in the old United States has grown wide enough to create new borders, and three new countries, but Levi Pickering is more concerned about surviving the next round of layoffs.



He works on a natural gas campus for the Energy Alliance and his job’s been great. His boss doesn’t micromanage, and he’s got a nice trailer just up the mountain from the company town. And that cute girl in IT is giving him signals. He thinks.



But when the AI-fortified control systems that govern every operation on campus are hacked, the same pipelines Levi designed years ago rain fire onto his home, workplace, and the people he’s come to care about.



He needs to mourn, but with his digital signature found on the commands that issued the campus-wide destruction, Levi’s branded a terrorist. Now, he must evade the Energy Alliance’s private militarized law enforcement, and find proof of his innocence or he’ll be hung.