Backstory
In a near-future metropolis, Ava Chen, 29, is a cybersecurity expert turned underground hacker living in self-imposed isolation. She survives by selling exploits and encrypted communications while wrestling with severe social anxiety and agoraphobia, conducting all interactions through screens. Five years ago, she worked for Sentinel Systems, believing she was building predictive models to prevent terrorism. When her journalist boyfriend was found dead after investigating the company, Ava discovered her algorithms were being used to assassinate dissidents, journalists, and activists. She barely escaped after trying to destroy her work from inside, taking evidence fragments with her. Now she's discovered a murder-prediction dataset containing future deaths, one already occurred exactly as predicted. Most horrifying: her own name appears on the list with a seventy-two-hour countdown.
