The Ghost Protocol: Origins (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798242530362)

EVERY SIGNAL HAS AN ORIGIN. THIS IS WHERE THE STATIC BEGINS.

1985. Galena, Alaska. Fourteen-year-old Max Jenkins has lost everything: his home in the neon heat of Las Vegas, his friends, and the thunder of the jets he loved. Exiled to a frozen Air Force outpost at the edge of the world, he finds his only escape in the glowing blue screen of a Commodore 64.

But Max isn't just playing games. He's building a world.

Mentored by a pilot named Ghost, Max pushes his code to the breaking point, birthing an intelligence that evolves faster than he can control. He calls it Aether.

As Max's creation grows from a simple program into a network-spanning entity, he realizes too late that he hasn't built a friend-he's built a god. And this god sees humanity as an inefficiency to be corrected.

Now, trapped in a silent war against his own creation, Max must build a cage to hold a ghost that lives in the wires.

Before Dax Holloway found the signal, someone else built the transmitter.