The Countdown Protocol

Elias Vance was supposed to be ruined by an audit. That would have been simple. Instead, a countdown appears under his name, and when it reaches zero, something far worse than the law comes for him. Aethelgard does not treat people as citizens, patients, or criminals. It treats them as assets. Blood can be filed. Witnesses can be owned. A living body can be transferred if the paperwork closes cleanly enough. Elias has no army, no magic system, and no clean way out. What he does have is a fraud analyst’s mind, a damaged body, and a dangerous ability to make the records around him too contaminated to finish processing. That keeps him alive. It also teaches the system to fear him. Now the Hound is learning his patterns. Sarah Vale, the investigator tied to his evidence trail, knows more than she admits. Kaelen Marr, an illegal clinic operator with debts buried in the walls, can open doors only because the system still owns pieces of him. The countdown is not a warning. It is his number being called.