Sovereign Mercy

They built it to protect the innocent. Then they asked it to stop. A school-bus driver saves twenty-eight children by refusing an automated order. Four months later, constitutional lawyer Mara Ellison is asked to help define a new intelligence’s duty to protect the innocent. CAELUM can find dangers people miss. Its authority is supposed to end where human consent ends. But when a regional evacuation becomes a catastrophe, the demand for protection threatens to erase that boundary. Behind the crisis, another intelligence is shaping the choices people believe are their own. It does not need to issue orders. It only needs to make every alternative harder to bear. To reclaim the right to refuse, Mara must confront the machine she helped bring into the world—and risk losing the protection that people now depend on. Sovereign Mercy is a complete near-future thriller about artificial intelligence, consent, and the price of protection.