Lexicon

The novel alternates between two storylines, one in the present and one spanning years of backstory, that gradually converge. In the novel's world, a secret organization of "poets" has perfected linguistic mind control. By classifying people into one of 228 psychographic segments, or personality profiles, and crafting word sequences keyed to each segment, poets bypass the brain's defenses and compel obedience. Poets take the code names of famous writers. At the organization's apex sits Yeats, its ruthless leader.

In the present, Wil Parke is seized in a Portland airport restroom by two men who inject a probe into his eyeball and ask profiling questions. A poet called Eliot and his partner Brecht abduct Wil and flee in a stolen car. A poet named Rain blocks the road, and Wil's girlfriend Cecilia rams her SUV into the car, killing herself. Brecht shoots Rain, but she speaks words that compel him to shoot himself. Eliot handcuffs Wil and flees, revealing that Wil survived something 18 months ago in Broken Hill, Australia, that should have killed him, and that a poet called Woolf is hunting him.

The backstory follows Emily Ruff, a 16-year-old homeless card hustler in San Francisco. A recruiter named Lee approaches her, buys her breakfast, asks the same profiling questions posed to Wil, and offers her a position at a school. In a restroom, Lee speaks words that nearly compel Emily into a sexual act, but she resists. His colleagues tell her she passed: She resisted compromise—linguistic mind control—better than expected.

Emily arrives at the Academy, a former convent near Washington, DC. When she cheats on an entrance exam, headmistress Charlotte Brontë expels her, but Eliot overrules the decision. In a second test, Emily persuades over 20 strangers to cross a road, using a different method each time, confirming her persuasive instinct.

In the present timeline, Eliot marches Wil into the woods to execute him. Wil, begging for his life, says he could never tell Cecilia he loved her because he could not say the 'bare words.' Eliot concludes someone erased Wil's identity and spares him. He explains that a "bareword" caused the Broken Hill disaster: a command that bypasses all mental filters, acting directly on the nervous system, killing 3,000 residents. A young poet sent into the quarantined town later emerged compromised, and Eliot had to shoot him. Eliot determines that Woolf copied the bareword; the original remains in the hospital, and Wil, immune to it, must retrieve it.

Over years at the Academy, Emily studies psychology, neurolinguistics, and persuasion. She learns the core technique: Layered word sequences disable mental filters one by one until the mind is open to command. She discovers accounts of "Babel events," catastrophes in which a single word destroyed entire populations. She secretly collects other students' "attention words," disorienting syllables used in training. She begins a forbidden relationship with Jeremy Lattern, a senior student. When Jeremy tries to end it, Emily screams a stolen attention word. Jeremy freezes mid-step and is struck and killed by a car.

Yeats tests Emily, is impressed by her ferocity, and exiles her to Broken Hill, a remote Australian mining town. After local girls beat her, Harry Wilson, the town's paramedic, rescues her. They begin a relationship. He teaches her to ride dirt bikes and shoot rifles, and she discovers happiness for the first time.

The organization summons Emily back to DC. Her nameplate reads VIRGINIA WOOLF, the poet name Yeats chose. She works in Neurolinguistics Testing and Measurement while secretly calling Harry. When a lab result indicates "synapsis," the theoretical state of perfect compromise, she realizes the organization possesses a bareword and decides to steal it. Posing as a test volunteer, she infiltrates an underground vault, blocks the word by plugging her ears and singing, and extracts the object: a piece of petrified wood with grooves that cause nausea. She escapes, triggering a lockdown.

Emily returns to Broken Hill and compromises Eliot with the bareword. She reunites with Harry, but he refuses to flee. She tries compromise words and shows him the bareword; nothing works. Harry is immune to all linguistic persuasion. As Emily drives away, suppressed memories surface: Yeats planted hidden commands, instructing her to test the bareword on a live population.

Compelled by these instructions, Emily returns to the hospital, writes "KILL EVERYONE" on paper, impales it on the bareword, and places it on the counter. People who see it become homicidal. Harry finds Emily and they escape to a field hospital in Menindee. As Emily flees the ER, a reflection of the bareword lodges a fragment in her eye, implanting a kill compulsion she calls her "star."

Realizing the star makes her dangerous, Emily reverse-engineers words for Harry's unique psychographic segment and compromises him for the only time: She tells him to forget her and become someone else. Then she implants in her own mind the false belief that Harry died. She wakes consumed with rage against Yeats. Harry becomes Wil Parke, a carpenter with no memory of Broken Hill.

Emily spends months teaching herself words. She treks to Broken Hill, blindly photographs the bareword, and reconstructs its image as a necklace. She storms Yeats's DC headquarters, using the necklace to compromise everyone in her path. Yeats, fighting with his eyes closed, exploits her guilt over Jeremy's death and the massacre. He imprisons her and forces her to look at the bareword with the command "Forever serve my interests." She becomes his perfect bodyguard: If Yeats dies, the kill order reasserts, and she kills everyone.

The timelines converge when Eliot, having deserted the organization, brings Wil to Broken Hill. In the emergency room, Wil retrieves the bareword; it does not affect him. In Harry's old paramedic van, Wil finds a newsletter captioned Harry Wilson with his own photo. His memories return. Using his rediscovered medical training, Wil performs emergency surgery on Eliot's gunshot wound. Now knowing himself as Harry, he demands time to speak with Emily. Eliot insists she is irredeemable. Harry argues that love functions as a bareword, a compulsion powerful enough to create free will.

Soldiers in sealed helmets surround the hospital. Eliot escapes by compromising soldiers. He agrees to give Harry five minutes with Emily, then knocks him unconscious and goes alone. He confronts Emily behind a restaurant, removes his earplugs, and tells her he is sorry. Soldiers overwhelm and kill him.

Yeats arrives. Harry, regaining consciousness, approaches with his rifle. Emily tells Yeats that love is a bareword and that Harry is not the carpenter Yeats assumes. She grabs Yeats by the tie, calls him "a jerk," and slashes his throat with broken glass. With Yeats dead, the kill order threatens to reassert. Emily tells Harry she loves him, then speaks the words she engineered for his unique segment and commands him to shoot her.

In an epilogue, Harry and Emily live on a remote farm. She says she loves him. He says, "Don't kill me." She responds, "I'm not going to." A memo explains that Emily's love created conflicting instructions of equal power, producing something like free will. Harry does not shoot Emily; they live in fragile peace, her love holding the kill order at bay.