ARC Book
Signal Drop
Near-Future Survival Thriller
The island appears from open water like the ruin of something enormous — a seawall first, then concrete towers rising grey against the Pacific sky. Kairos Group calls it the Platform. Everyone else calls it the opportunity of a lifetime. Twenty-four contestants have been selected to compete in Kairos's annual survival event: twelve days on a decommissioned island off the coast of Japan, a Signal Vest, and a set of rules that are almost true. Tag enough opponents, survive the building shutdowns, outlast the rest. The contract waiting for the last person standing is worth more than most people earn in a decade. Akira Mori is not here for the contract. She spent three years building the behavioral algorithm that selected every person on this island — including herself. She knows what Kairos is actually testing for. She knows what happens to the winners after the cameras stop. Somewhere beneath this island's crumbling concrete, in mining shafts that descend nearly a kilometer below the sea floor, is the evidence that proves it. She has twelve days. She has to reach the shafts, retrieve what's there, and engineer her own elimination before Kairos figures out who she really is. The island has held secrets before. Some of them are still down there. Signal Drop is a near-future survival thriller about a competition with no honest rules, an island that remembers everything, and the woman who built the system she came to destroy.
