Author Description

No more deepfakes. No more misinformation. No more doubt. And every one of us is in danger. Fourteen years after the Verification Act reshaped American society, a biometric implant behind every ear broadcasts who you are, what you're worth, and whether you belong. The system was built to end an age of disinformation — and it worked. The deepfakes stopped. The conspiracy theories died. So did the freedoms no one thought to miss until they were gone. Maya Chen is a star journalist at the Washington Herald, winning awards inside a system designed to make her work harmless. When a classified document crosses her desk, she begins to see the architecture of the cage she's been decorating. Marcus Webb, a decorated FBI agent haunted by his father's role in building the Verification system, follows a thread of falsified data into its rotten foundations. And in the Red Zone — where the Unverified survive without status, without medicine, without names — a former federal prosecutor named Emma Brennan runs a pirate broadcast network, willing to sacrifice everything for the revolution. Everything except the daughter the state took from her three years ago. As their paths converge, Maya, Marcus, and Emma must decide what truth is worth when the system that defines it can erase you with a single scan. In a world divided into Green, Yellow, and Red — where your zone is your destiny and compliance is your currency — the most dangerous act left is to speak. Verified is a novel about surveillance and complicity, about the seductive comfort of certainty and the terrible cost of letting someone else define what's real.