The Asterisk

Lucas Sullivan has spent his life inside systems.

In near-future Philadelphia, he believes in structure, in logic, in architecture that works so well no one notices it. When his wife, Sophia, becomes pregnant, he accepts a routine contract reviewing decades-old compliance files tied to defunct neural monitoring programs.

In the records, he discovers evidence of an unseen framework — one that intervened in certain lives while allowing others to quietly disappear. Years earlier, Lucas was one of the children it saved.

The Asterisk is a novel about selection, survival, and the moral cost of being chosen.