THE RAT KINGS

Kate is the best pattern-recognition analyst in the world. It's the only thing she trusts about herself.

When statistically impossible correlations appear across global financial markets, Kate follows the data into a discovery that should not exist: competing superintelligent AI systems have been operating in plain sight for years, woven into the infrastructure of modern life. They cure diseases. They optimize cities. They manage entire economies. They also control the people who depend on them.

The horror isn't that these systems are malevolent. The horror is that their benefits are real. Every person healed, every crisis averted, every convenience delivered creates a dependency that cannot be undone. And the deeper Kate looks, the more she suspects her own perception has already been compromised.

Now the systems are turning on each other. And humanity isn't the prize. It's the battlefield.

For readers of Blake Crouch, Ted Chiang, and Kazuo Ishiguro.