For three years, Soren Cross has lived in a self-imposed prison of absolute silence. A former psychic operative for a clandestine British agency, his ability to feel the emotions of others was honed into a devastating weapon. But the constant psychic noise of a world in pain pushed him to the brink, forcing him to flee into a sterile, isolated existence. He is a ghost, haunted by the feelings of everyone but himself.
His quiet is shattered when his former handler, the manipulative and brilliant Julian Croft, appears with an impossible demand. Gideon Vale, a monstrously powerful empath from Soren's past, has resurfaced. He is executing world leaders with a terrifying new method: weaponized empathy, killing his targets with a projection of pure, undiluted agony. The intelligence community is blind and helpless. Soren, who shares Gideon's unique psychic signature, is the only one who can track him.
Dragged back into the world of shadows, Soren is forced to use the very power that nearly destroyed him. He becomes the reluctant hunter, chasing a man who is both his enemy and his dark reflection. But the hunt reveals a conspiracy far more terrifying than a single rogue agent. Soren discovers that Project Empath was built on a foundation of lies, and that Croft's motives are steeped in a monstrous philosophy that sees human trauma as a resource to be mined.
With his own mind rigged with a psychic kill switch keyed to his deepest grief, Soren finds himself a fugitive, allied with a brilliant analyst and hunted by his own government. To survive, he must not only confront the killer who mirrors his abilities, but also expose the man who created them both. It's a desperate gambit where the only winning move might be to sacrifice his own soul.
Soren Cross is a ghost, a former intelligence operative living in self-imposed exile, his mind a prison of other people's pain. Born with a rare psychic empathy, he was the government's perfect weapon-a tool that could feel a target's deepest secrets. But the cost was his soul.
Now, the monster who built his cage has returned. A rogue agent from the same dark program, a killer named Gideon Vale, is assassinating world leaders, not with a bullet, but with a shared, projected wave of agony. The only one who can track him, the only one who can feel his psychic signature, is Soren.
Forced back into a world of manipulation and violence, Soren must hunt his dark reflection. But as he delves deeper into Gideon's crusade, he discovers a horrifying truth: the real enemy may not be the man he's hunting, but the man holding his leash. With a kill switch wired to his own trauma and a conspiracy that goes to the highest levels of power, Soren's only path to survival is to embrace the very curse that destroyed him.
