The acrid scent of gas rips Joyce Aldridge from sleep. The kitchen, usually bathed in the soft glow of dawn, is shrouded in an unnatural twilight, all four burners on her stove blazing. Another 'accident.’ Another near-disaster meticulously staged to look like her own fault. Her perfect life, her sleek Portland home, her successful advertising career—it’s all unraveling, thanks to her husband, Ethan. His whispers of “love” feel like ice, his casual dismissals echoing in her mind: “just a little slip, love, ” “butterfingers, darling.”
Driven by a primal fear, Joyce transforms her home into a fortress of surveillance. But the hidden cameras reveal a terrifying truth: *she* is the culprit, moving with a sleepwalker’s grace, acting out Ethan’s insidious phrases. He isn’t just gaslighting her; he’s programming her.
Ethan, a rising star at the shadowy corporation Nova Tech, has weaponized experimental hypnotherapy gleaned from their clandestine “Chrysalis” project. He’s turning Joyce into an unwitting agent of chaos, a pawn in his twisted game of control. Her only hope is Caitlin Woods, a former rival turned cybersecurity expert, who recognizes the chilling precision of the 'accidents’—a tampered brake line, a strategically placed knife.
Their investigation plunges them into a world of encrypted forums and anonymous whistleblowers, uncovering a disturbing pattern: similar “accidents” linked to Nova Tech employees and their spouses. The 'Chrysalis’ project is far more insidious than they imagined, its true objective: corporate sabotage on a global scale.
As Joyce and Caitlin dig deeper, the stakes escalate. Ethan tightens his grip, introducing Joyce to Nova Tech’s lead psychologist, a man with eyes as cold as a surgeon’s scalpel. Caitlin races against time, hacking into Nova Tech’s servers, uncovering the horrifying scope of their plan: a network of programmed husbands, each with an unsuspecting wife, each a potential weapon.
The climax explodes in the sterile glass walls of Joyce’s advertising firm, a space she once commanded, now a psychological battleground. A sabotaged presentation threatens to destroy her career and expose Nova Tech’s machinations. Armed with Caitlin’s intel, Joyce must confront Ethan and the forces controlling him, leveraging the very programming he instilled to break free.
The truth, when it shatters, reveals a conspiracy far more terrifying than Joyce could have imagined. Left with a chilling choice, she must decide: succumb to the programming or forge a new identity in the ashes of her former life. In this harrowing game of manipulation and defiance, Joyce must fight not only for her sanity but for the future of a world teetering on the edge of control.
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