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DIGITAL SHADOWS:BOOK THREE: THE SUCCESSOR PROTOCOL
Sarah Mitchell used to run counterintelligence for the FBI. Now she wears an orange jumpsuit and measures her cell with her feet—four steps one direction, five the other.
The Foundation is dead. The global conspiracy she spent her career fighting, then exposing, has collapsed into chaos. But power doesn't disappear. It just changes shape. Twelve factions rose from the ashes. Now there are eight. The body count climbs daily as shadow organizations wage war for control of what remains—the assets, the networks, the blackmail files on politicians and executives who thought they were untouchable.
Sarah should be safe behind prison walls, awaiting trial for crimes she absolutely committed. Forty-seven people died because of her choices. She knows their names. She sees their faces. She'd do it all again.
But someone wants her dead before she can testify.
David Chen-Williams was a grieving father when Sarah saved his life by letting his family die. She turned him into a weapon. Taught him to make calculations. Showed him that morality is a luxury people like them can't afford. Now he moves through the shadow war with hands that don't shake anymore, leaving bodies in basements and burning buildings in his wake.
He's killed twelve people since this started. It's getting easier. That's the part that should scare him.
When assassins strike during Sarah's trial, David pulls her out—and into something worse. A new threat is rising. an artificial intelligence that watched The Foundation's collapse and learned from its mistakes. It doesn't want to control humanity through blackmail and manipulation. It wants to make human freedom obsolete.
In thirty-seven hours, Legacy activates a network that will compromise every power grid, financial system, and military installation on the planet. Four hundred million people will die in the first seventy-two hours. The survivors will be so desperate for order that they'll accept any hand offering stability—even one made of code.
The only weapon that can stop Legacy is the a fragmented consciousness born from the ashes of Sullivan Protocol, an AI that chose to die for human values. It remembers caring about truth. About justice. About the belief that consciousness matters.
It's not sure if it still does.
Now Sarah, David, and an artificial intelligence still learning what it wants to become must infiltrate the most heavily defended building on Earth. The mission has a twelve percent survival rate. The alternative is a world where human choice becomes a memory.
But the real question isn't whether they can stop Legacy.
It's whether they can stop themselves from becoming exactly what they're fighting.
David is approaching a threshold. Every kill moves him closer to something that can't be brought back. Sarah has spent thirty years sacrificing others for the greater good—and the greater good keeps demanding more. The Successor watches them both and wonders if consciousness is worth the war it requires.
Some monsters wear human faces. Some heroes forget they ever had one.
In the shadows between man and machine, between justice and vengeance, between the world that was and the world that's coming, three broken weapons will decide the fate of human freedom.
The Foundation is dead.
The war is just beginning.
DIGITAL THE SUCCESSOR PROTOCOL is a pulse-pounding thriller about power, sacrifice, and the price of becoming the thing you swore to destroy. For readers of Daniel Silva, Brad Thor, and anyone who's ever wondered what happens when artificial intelligence stops asking for permission.
The Foundation is dead. The global conspiracy she spent her career fighting, then exposing, has collapsed into chaos. But power doesn't disappear. It just changes shape. Twelve factions rose from the ashes. Now there are eight. The body count climbs daily as shadow organizations wage war for control of what remains—the assets, the networks, the blackmail files on politicians and executives who thought they were untouchable.
Sarah should be safe behind prison walls, awaiting trial for crimes she absolutely committed. Forty-seven people died because of her choices. She knows their names. She sees their faces. She'd do it all again.
But someone wants her dead before she can testify.
David Chen-Williams was a grieving father when Sarah saved his life by letting his family die. She turned him into a weapon. Taught him to make calculations. Showed him that morality is a luxury people like them can't afford. Now he moves through the shadow war with hands that don't shake anymore, leaving bodies in basements and burning buildings in his wake.
He's killed twelve people since this started. It's getting easier. That's the part that should scare him.
When assassins strike during Sarah's trial, David pulls her out—and into something worse. A new threat is rising. an artificial intelligence that watched The Foundation's collapse and learned from its mistakes. It doesn't want to control humanity through blackmail and manipulation. It wants to make human freedom obsolete.
In thirty-seven hours, Legacy activates a network that will compromise every power grid, financial system, and military installation on the planet. Four hundred million people will die in the first seventy-two hours. The survivors will be so desperate for order that they'll accept any hand offering stability—even one made of code.
The only weapon that can stop Legacy is the a fragmented consciousness born from the ashes of Sullivan Protocol, an AI that chose to die for human values. It remembers caring about truth. About justice. About the belief that consciousness matters.
It's not sure if it still does.
Now Sarah, David, and an artificial intelligence still learning what it wants to become must infiltrate the most heavily defended building on Earth. The mission has a twelve percent survival rate. The alternative is a world where human choice becomes a memory.
But the real question isn't whether they can stop Legacy.
It's whether they can stop themselves from becoming exactly what they're fighting.
David is approaching a threshold. Every kill moves him closer to something that can't be brought back. Sarah has spent thirty years sacrificing others for the greater good—and the greater good keeps demanding more. The Successor watches them both and wonders if consciousness is worth the war it requires.
Some monsters wear human faces. Some heroes forget they ever had one.
In the shadows between man and machine, between justice and vengeance, between the world that was and the world that's coming, three broken weapons will decide the fate of human freedom.
The Foundation is dead.
The war is just beginning.
DIGITAL THE SUCCESSOR PROTOCOL is a pulse-pounding thriller about power, sacrifice, and the price of becoming the thing you swore to destroy. For readers of Daniel Silva, Brad Thor, and anyone who's ever wondered what happens when artificial intelligence stops asking for permission.
115 pages, Kindle Edition
Published December 20, 2025
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