Seraphim: The Activation

By David Fernandes

In a city divided by upper and lower class, a single corporation, known as Ilium, with strong political ties, had been granted rights to protect the luxurious downtown core with its technologically advanced security detail, the IDC Mechanical Guards, while the ill-equipped police departments remain constricted by corrupted city officials to remain only within city's slums. The cardinal rule is that each force may only enter in the other's territory by word of the City Councillors.Head of the IDC, James Grey, finds himself in a life-altering scenario, believing that his past was once so far behind him that nothing could stop the growth of his power and persistence for technological control. Yet, he remains haunted of what he had left behind, until one day, his past came strolling through the front lobby of Ilium Towers.Across Antium, in the slums, a woman, Jacqueline Moore Chu, has recently come across the true nature of her biological parents' death and begins her journey in finding why the twenty year old case went cold while having credible evidence and a suspect of interest. Her curiosity leads her and her close friend Dresden Malko to side with people they had been convinced by the media were labelled dangerous activists or terrorists.The tension throughout Antium City grows exponentially when Jacqueline's stepfather, a local police officer, is falsely arrested in a murder case of an Ilium paralegal. This turn of events has many residents of the core, slums, as well as its police force up in arms when the City Council grants the IDC to place Antium under a strict lockdown. The result, the local police take up posts along the expressways leading to and from the downtown core. However, a brazen escape by Jacqueline's stepfather, aided by an Ilium doctor leads to a deadly pursuit along the streets of the downtown core and into the slums. The cardinal rule has been broken.Enter the Seraphim Network, a self-aware artificial intelligence designed by James Grey and Ilium technicians. Created to monitor, maintain and control the IDC's security detail and other outsourced IDC units without human intervention. However, as truths emerge and lies begin to burn, James' emotions and mental frustration gets the better of him as he commands the A.I. to protect itself at all costs from any outside intervention. This order causes Seraphim to release itself from the protected Ilium network and installing onto an onboard hard drive mounted inside an IDC aerial drone as it begins to strategize every IDC unit in the downtown core while categorizing Antium's citizens to what it believes are threats to the Seraphim's longevity.The result is something that Jacqueline, nor James, the citizens of Antium, police, and Ilium itself ever expected to occur. A brewing conflict between the IDC and the local police erupts when Jacqueline becomes determined to show the world the true nature, corruption and murderous tactics staged in order for one corporation to keep its strangle hold on a city dying for its freedom and women who is willing to sacrifice her life to prove it all.In a story covered with layers, Jacqueline Moore Chu, and James Grey find themselves in a world they had never imagined, a world that crosses their paths, as fate holds no boundaries when the past collides with the present.(I was young, drunk and on MDMA when I wrote this)

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1481127306
• ISBN13: 9781481127301
• Release Date: December 2012
• Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
• Length: 434 Pages
• Weight: 1.27 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.0" x 9.0"