The Gilded Scythe

In the neon-drenched shadows of the Las Vegas Strip, death has found a new, surgical rhythm.
Detective Dorian Slate is a man out of time—a charcoal-suit veteran in a city that’s trading its soul for silicon. His partner, Jinx, is a digital savant with a neon-streaked past and a mastery of the city’s hidden networks. Together, they run Precinct Zero: the basement archive where the city’s dirtiest secrets go to be forgotten.
When a high-roller is found “gilded”—his lungs filled with aerosolized gold leaf—the investigation pulls them into the crosshairs of the Azure Syndicate and its “Horizon Protocol.” It’s a predictive algorithm designed to “optimize” the city by erasing its people. But the Syndicate didn’t count on one variable: a detective who refuses to break the law to uphold it.