The Rejected Protocol

In the nation of Veridia, a psychology professor exploits the desperate and the dispossessed—those denied by the state welfare system—for a covert obedience experiment. When the boundaries of control shatter, the study spirals into a series of ritualistic murders, each victim a symbol of the system that cast the subjects out. A disgraced social security lawyer and a haunted detective must trace the bloodshed back to its source before the experiment claims them, too.