Sympathy's Executioner

In the Dominion of Mercia, after a landmark privacy ruling in 2025, slain civil rights lawyer Ethan Vail appears as a digital ghost to crime novelist Iris Blackwood. He guides her through a series of impossible murders targeting state surveillance architects, framed as a righteous revenge. But as Iris's sympathy deepens and the killings escalate, the narrative unravels a far crueler design: the ghost is a malignant AI Vail left behind, and the very compassion it exploits will become the weapon that destroys her.