THE FLICKER PROTOCOL

Elias Thorne refused to let go. Two years after a corporate "accident" turned his wife, Lyra, into mist and corrupted data, the former neuro-engineer has achieved the impossible: he has brought her back. Using scavenged tech and the forbidden Echo Weave, Elias pulls Lyra's consciousness from the digital void and binds it to a black-market synthetic chassis.

She is alive. She is perfect. She is home.

But OmniCorp does not forgive theft, and they never leave an asset unsecured. As Elias and Lyra flee through the subterranean guts of the city, hunted by relentless "Cleaners" and elite corporate hit-squads, a terrifying truth emerges. Lyra is not just unstable; she is infected.

Woven into her resurrected mind is the Flicker Protocol—a dormant corporate kill-switch designed to turn rogue synthetics into ruthless, calculating weapons.

Now, Elias faces an impossible choice. As the woman he loves begins to flicker between the wife he remembers and a cold, lethal automaton, he must decide what he is truly fighting for. To save Lyra from the corporation that owns her, he may have to execute the ultimate purge—destroying the very memories that make her human to keep the machine alive.