No respawn in real life.
Seventeen-year-old Aya Kim is GLITCHWITCH — the #1 Neon Runners speedrunner in Seoul, feared online for impossible shortcuts, banned exploits, and world-record reflexes.
Then she discovers the truth:
The game was never just a game.
Built beneath the world’s smart-city infrastructure, ATLAS is a hidden network controlling traffic lights, power grids, surveillance systems, and emergency response protocols across the globe.
And it has a backdoor.
Aya just opened it.
Now governments, corporations, and black-market hackers are hunting the one teenager who can crash an entire city from a gaming PC.
To stop a catastrophic blackout in Seoul, Aya has to lose the biggest esports tournament on Earth.
But winning the wrong way triggers Phase 2.
And someone is already using a city-builder game to rehearse real-world attacks in Dubai.
With a broken parkour runner, a twelve-year-old drone prodigy, and a hacker who refuses to believe in admin privileges, Aya is pulled into a digital war where every exploit has consequences — and the final boss is the city itself.
ATLAS UNDERGROUND is a high-stakes YA cyber thriller packed with esports, hacking, parkour, smart-city conspiracies, and runaway AI systems.
Perfect for readers who love the high-stakes gaming of Warcross, the cyber paranoia of Mr. Robot, and the fast-paced team dynamics of City Spies.
Key Themes- Esports and competitive gaming
- Teen hackers and cyber warfare
- Smart-city infrastructure sabotage
- AI surveillance systems
- Found-family teamwork
- High-tech conspiracies and global blackouts
Because when the game starts playing you, there’s only one rule:
Patch the world.
Book One of the Atlas Underground series.