The world beneath silence

By Payne

In the sterile world of the Collective, silence is the law, emotion is a virus, and Nova Ryel is the perfect citizen until a single technical glitch cracks the mask she never knew she was wearing.

Flagged as an "anomaly" and marked for recalibration, Nova has hours before the only life she's ever known is erased along with the feeling that betrayed her. Guided by a mysterious hacker and the buried legacy of a mother she believed was a ghost, she flees beyond the city walls into the wild, decaying ruins the Collective left for dead.

There, she finds what the Core swore didn't exist: a hidden resistance of "glitches" survivors who refused to be erased, who chose to feel, to grieve, to love, and to fight rather than disappear quietly into the silence.

But waking up is only the beginning. To save the people she loves and the world she never knew she was born to change Nova must embrace everything the Collective tried to burn out of her: rage, grief, hope, and the messy, dangerous, essential fire of being human.

The silence is ending. The rebellion is waking up. And they are ready to rise.

A dystopian science fiction novel for readers of divided societies, buried rebellions, and the price of feeling everything.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1764816919
• ISBN13: 9781764816915
• Release Date: July 2026
• Publisher: S .L .Payne
• Length: 452 Pages
• Weight: 1.19 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.0" x 9.0"