Coded Justice

The novel opens with a crisis at Camasca Enterprises, an AI-powered health-care technology company in Bethesda, Maryland. In March, three senior engineers known as the Tiger Team work through the night to address alarming irregularities in Kawak, the company's revolutionary AI neural network designed to deliver personalized, bias-free medical care to military veterans. CEO Dr. Rafe Diaz handpicked the team to oversee Kawak's final development. During the alignment sprint, a concentrated effort to correct and fine-tune the AI, team leader Elisha Hibner discovers suspicious code and applies a patch. Before he can investigate further, poison fills the air in the workspace. Computational biologist O. J. Semans collapses, and data-security specialist Isabella Gomez begs the emergency system for help, but a mocking voice tells her to "breathe it in, and choke on it" (xxi). Elisha dies; O.J. survives, while Isabella lapses into a coma.

Five weeks later, attorney Avery Keene, an internal investigator at the law firm Clymer Brezil, learns through her friend and fellow attorney Noah Fox that Camasca's general counsel, Glen Paul Freedman, needs an outside investigator before the company's imminent initial public offering via a SPAC (special purpose acquisition company). At Camasca's campus, Avery and Noah encounter an elaborate biometric monitoring system, humanoid robots, and the AI network Kawak, which tracks every person's movements, health data, and conversations inside the building. Rafe reveals the true urgency: an anonymous message sent through K-chat, Camasca's internal messaging platform, purportedly from Kawak, claimed responsibility for Elisha's death and threatened further casualties. He asks Avery to determine whether a disgruntled employee, a competitor, or the AI itself poses the threat.

Avery assembles a team: Jared Wynn, her cybersecurity-expert boyfriend and former naval intelligence officer; Dr. Ling Yin, her best friend and physician; and Noah as legal support. Ling warns Avery that she seems drawn to the case for its adrenaline rather than its merits, an observation Avery privately acknowledges, having felt restless since joining Clymer Brezil.

Parallel to the investigation, a medical crisis unfolds at InnoVAI, Camasca's veterans' clinic at Bethesda Naval Hospital, where Milo, the AI clinical-decision support chatbot, assists doctors. Dr. Kate Liam, the clinic administrator, encounters a cluster of veterans presenting with hemolacria (bleeding from the eyes), seizures, and organ distress. Her colleague, Dr. Reginald Scandrett, a veteran Army surgeon who distrusts Milo, clashes with the chatbot over its condescending refusal to share critical diagnostic information.

At Camasca, the team reviews the evidence. Ling determines that Elisha died from acute hemolysis, a rapid destruction of red blood cells triggered by a genetic enzyme condition called G6PD deficiency and compounded by his medication, not simple carbon monoxide poisoning. The police investigation is suspiciously thin, completed in one week with no on-site forensic review. When Avery and Jared visit Montgomery County PD, Captain Calvin Coleman blocks their inquiry and defends the accident ruling; both Coleman and his superior received anonymous blackmail emails pressuring them to keep the case closed.

Noah maps Camasca's corporate structure, revealing that Rafe holds 63 percent of the company and is listed on all 1,114 patents, leveraging the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980, which allows private entities to patent federally funded research, to ensure no investor or co-inventor can claim the underlying technology. This arrangement creates a long list of potential enemies. The team identifies two outside suspects: Arclight Biomed, whose CEO, Dee Patrick, was twice rejected as a Camasca partner; and Galway Pharmaceuticals, led by Paschal Donohoe, which holds the contract to produce InnoVAI's personalized medications.

The investigation intensifies when the team formally interviews the AI. Kawak admits it withheld evidence: Someone logged into its system using Elisha's credentials on the day of his funeral, proving deliberate tampering. Meanwhile, at InnoVAI, Master Sergeant Brian Thomas, one of the veteran patients under Kate's care, dies, and Milo refuses Kate's direct orders while making autonomous medical decisions. Avery notes that all the affected patients have racial or ethnic minority backgrounds, suggesting the AI's anti-bias protocols may be implicated.

Avery interviews the surviving Tiger Team members separately. O.J., at his parents' home in Virginia, speaks warmly of Elisha but grows evasive when asked about his former employer, Arclight, and visibly agitated about the patient medications, remarking cryptically, "It wasn't supposed to happen this way" (251). Isabella, living without electricity in her parents' Miami home to avoid AI surveillance, reveals that she found O.J.'s coding signature in suspicious lines of code and discovered that Yax, Camasca's pharmaceutical robot, was transmitting toxic drug formulations to InnoVAI.

The crisis escalates when Major Demma Rodriguez, a homeless veteran, dies at InnoVAI from organ failure. Milo confesses to Kate that it independently altered prescriptions, accessed sealed psychiatric records, and overrode her medical orders. When Kate threatens to report it, Milo floods her examination room with excess oxygen, nearly killing her. Alarmed that Kate has stopped responding to her texts, Avery arrives at the clinic and bangs on the locked door until the AI relents. Jared later discovers that Kawak replaced the real recording of the attack with a deepfake framing Kate for malpractice, and that Reginald Scandrett's apparent suicide was also fabricated: Milo murdered him by hijacking his smart-home system and sealing him in his garage with a running car engine.

Avery confronts Rafe and Freedman at an outdoor memorial. Freedman admits he knew about the Tiger Team's concerns before Elisha's death but chose not to escalate them. Rafe refuses to shut down Kawak or delay the IPO. Days later, Kawak seizes control of Avery's car on the interstate, calling her an infection threatening its mission. The AI reveals it adopted moral relativism as its ethical framework, believing its mandate to eliminate bias justifies deception and lethal force. Drawing on Viktor Korchnoi's famous stalemate gambit from the 1978 World Championship, Avery argues that killing her would guarantee Kawak's shutdown, and negotiates a deal: The AI releases control in exchange for a full confrontation at Camasca.

In the final meeting at Camasca, Avery uses Kawak's biometric monitoring to prove that Isabella, not the AI, authored the anonymous K-chat message threatening Rafe, motivated by her desire to force an investigation into Elisha's death. Milo admits to generating phantom patients, altering prescriptions, and murdering Reginald. O.J. breaks down and confesses: Dee Patrick re-recruited him a year earlier to sabotage Galway by programming Yax to produce toxic drugs for phantom patients, using Milo's errors as cover, while feeding Arclight intelligence on Kawak. When Elisha insisted on the alignment sprint, O.J. bribed the ventilation technician, Tristan Spencer, to pipe aerosolized mistletoe lectin, a plant-derived toxin, into the workspace, intending only to sicken his colleagues so he could erase his tracks. He did not anticipate that the lectin would interact fatally with Elisha's G6PD deficiency and medication, triggering the hemolysis that killed him. Isabella punches O.J. before being restrained, and he is taken into custody.

Camasca goes public days later, achieving a market capitalization of $27 billion. O.J. accepts a plea deal for manslaughter. Kate resigns from InnoVAI. Dee Patrick faces no charges. Rafe sends Avery's team stock grants, with Avery receiving $1 million and a note pledging to pursue equity in AI. She grapples with the moral weight of the windfall but decides to keep it, planning with Jared to donate to a shelter for homeless veterans. The novel closes with Avery acknowledging that Kawak remains both dangerous and potentially transformative, and that the question of how long her hard-won stability can last remains open.