Phantom In The Machine

Book 2 of Bleeding Aegis

Iver has survived his first year at the academy. He managed to join the Sect of the Dark Hunter but must keep that truth veiled. The young Darkling is still recovering from a broken heart and the bitter sting of betrayal. But just when Iver thinks he knows what to expect from his next year at the Academy, he gets a nasty surprise. He is sent out into the Hive-city capital of the nation with his new master and a party of friends and strangers.

But something isn't right. While Iver is performing simple jobs in a dangerous city cloaked in smog, he stumbles across a new mystery. People are dying from having their brains cooked while they are hooked up to the Full Dive network. This is something that should be impossible. A mysterious internet presence known only as The Phantom is targeting members of a local mega-corporation, but why?

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While Iver struggles to solve this mystery before it takes too many lives, things get complicated. A team member wants Iver dead. His friend Nennel becomes the target of a gang of cybernetic harvesters that will stop at nothing to break down the young girl because of something her father did. While this is happening, Iver's other friend, Ferris, is acting strange. What is he hiding? On his hunt for answers, Iver is forced into the derelict Undercity that runs miles down and is filled with monsters, cannibals, and something truly horrible.

Iver will be forced to pay his pound of flesh to get his friends to safety on more than one occasion down this road. With missing pieces and life-altering mistakes, Iver is forced to seek help from a strange Elf who helps him find some answers to who and what he truly is. But the deeper Iver digs into his origins, the more questions come to the surface, and worries linger unsaid.

Things are about to get harder before anything starts going right.