The Isolation Protocol

In the shadow-strewn Avalon Federation, a tech giant's crime-prediction AI determines that certain prisoners are too dangerous to live among others, segregating them by algorithmic decree. When Elias Vance, an HIV-positive inmate in the Blackwood Penitentiary, dies violently in his isolated cell, the state calls it a tragedy of premeditated aggression. But disgraced hacktivist Kade Mercer receives a cryptic message suggesting Vance was murdered by something far more insidious than a fellow convict. Plunging into a digital underworld where whispers of prejudice train machines to see monsters, Mercer must navigate a conspiracy engineered by a shadow government and a ruthless corporation. As the line between prediction and persecution blurs, he discovers that the deadliest weapon is not a shiv, but the venomous gossip of a frightened society, and that the only path to redemption is to drag the hidden whispers into the blinding light of physical justice.