Cohort One

A sealed prototype city in the Arizona desert has swallowed eight thousand volunteers whole—and one of them is journalist Megan Vitek's closest friend, who no longer remembers her own name. Invited inside on a carefully managed press junket, Megan has five days before the gates reopen to uncover what the city's founders have buried beneath their gleaming infrastructure: a neural compliance technology that erases memory, suppresses will, and is about to be sold to the Pentagon. With every wall watching and every exit locked, the only way out is through the truth.