USA TODAY Best-Selling author Kecia Bal’s newest thriller takes readers to the next level of social connection.
Welcome to the near future. There is only one company, one government, one social operating network: The Collective. And now a killer computer virus is mutating it into a monster.
Alida Whorl, a 20-year-old computer programmer and member of the Collective’s elite virus-hunter team, is all guardian, all the time. She’s fiercely protective of Collective users and their way of life, and also of her younger brother, an eccentric sound artist with a knack for conspiracy theories. When an intelligent virus begins worming its way into users’ minds, Alida’s worst nightmares become real. If she’s going to save anyone, or find her brother, she’ll have to abandon the life she loves, assemble a team of rebels, and take on a deadly black-box dilemma before their entire world is overwritten by chaos.
Similar to episodes of Black Mirror, Dave Egger’s The Circle, and Caragh O’Brien’s The Vault of Dreamers, The Collective features a society that has, for the most part, embraced a hyper-invasive method of all-encompassing connection. Download it today, if you dare.
Kecia is an award-winning writer, a former print journalist, a mom of two, and a longtime student of the art of storytelling. She lives with her family in the beautiful mountains of western Pennsylvania. Read more about her HERE.
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