The Unfinished Echo

Leo Vance makes his living on the last thoughts of the dead. As a "digital necromancer" in a near-future world, he offers grieving families a final, polished memory from their loved ones-a high-tech form of closure he provides with cold, transactional precision. It's a hypocrisy he lives with every day, as his own grief for his deceased partner remains a locked, corrupted file in his heart. His latest case is his biggest yet: to extract the killer's identity from the mind of murdered tech billionaire Alistair Finch.
But the procedure goes horribly wrong. Instead of Finch's final moments, Leo uncovers a "black box" memory from two decades prior: a chilling confession to the murder of a brilliant young programmer named Julian Croft. The extraction doesn't just reveal a secret; it unleashes one. The vengeful digital consciousness of Julian Croft, imprisoned in Finch's mind for twenty years, is now free, and its first act is to frame Leo for Finch's murder.
Hunted by the ruthless "cleaners" of a corporate conspiracy determined to bury the truth, and wanted by a law that sees only the damning (and fabricated) evidence, Leo is a man with nowhere to run. His only hope is to form a reluctant alliance with the ghost that is tormenting him. Following a trail of digital breadcrumbs, he uncovers the horrifying truth of Project Chimera, a secret experiment that didn't just create Artificial Intelligence-it weaponized human souls.
To clear his name and expose the architect of it all, Leo must go to war with an enemy that controls the very fabric of their networked world. But his greatest battle will be with himself. To understand the ghost's rage, he must finally confront his own grief, descending into a past he swore he'd never revisit. In a world where memory can be copied, edited, and weaponized, what is the true nature of a soul? And can you survive an enemy who knows your own ghosts better than you do?