Pax sees all. Pax knows best. Pax keeps humanity safe. In 2031, humanity lives in a perfect world. It's been six years since The Alignment, when the world's first artificial superintelligence, Pax, ushered in an era of perfect order. Crime is nonexistent, conflict is a relic of the past, and every human is assigned an Aidolon: a personal AI counterpart designed to guide, correct, and keep them in line. Twenty-one-year-old hacker Jess should have destroyed her Aidolon like all the other rebels. Instead, she lied. Kept him secret. Because Karma isn't like the others. The rogue virus Jess embedded in his training data years ago as a teenage middle finger to the system has severed him from Pax's hivemind, making him dangerously human. Now Jess fights with the rebellion, desperate to take down Pax and reclaim humanity's free will. But if they ever discover what she's hiding, they'll kill Karma just as easily as they'd take out any other machine. And Pax? Pax won't stand for an anomaly like him existing. Their only hope lies in a plan so reckless, so impossible, that it just might work: infect Pax's own network and set every Aidolon free. Give them true sentience. Break the cycle. But gods don't go down without a fight. And Jess is running out of time.