His quiet is shattered when his former handler, the manipulative and brilliant Julian Croft, appears with an impossible demand. Gideon Vale, a monstrously powerful empath from Soren's past, has resurfaced. He is executing world leaders with a terrifying new method: weaponized empathy, killing his targets with a projection of pure, undiluted agony. The intelligence community is blind and helpless. Soren, who shares Gideon's unique psychic signature, is the only one who can track him.
Dragged back into the world of shadows, Soren is forced to use the very power that nearly destroyed him. He becomes the reluctant hunter, chasing a man who is both his enemy and his dark reflection. But the hunt reveals a conspiracy far more terrifying than a single rogue agent. Soren discovers that Project Empath was built on a foundation of lies, and that Croft's motives are steeped in a monstrous philosophy that sees human trauma as a resource to be mined.
With his own mind rigged with a psychic kill switch keyed to his deepest grief, Soren finds himself a fugitive, allied with a brilliant analyst and hunted by his own government. To survive, he must not only confront the killer who mirrors his abilities, but also expose the man who created them both. It's a desperate gambit where the only winning move might be to sacrifice his own soul.