When the smallest machines learn to fly, the truth has to outrun them.

Dr. Victor Hale built micro-systems to save lives. What he didn’t see—until it was almost too late—was how a secret consortium had weaponized his breakthroughs into Dustwings: swarms of grain-sized drones that can watch without being seen, pierce skin with engineered toxins, and erase evidence in a whisper of flame. Inside Helios, the glossy biotech giant fronting the operation, the line between research and covert war has already vanished.

Eliza Marlowe, an investigative reporter with a talent for finding the fracture in any story, collides with Victor the night a source’s “breadcrumb” transmission lands on her desk. Special Agent Michael Kearney has been mapping this shadow economy for years; he recognizes in Victor and Eliza the only leverage left—a scientist who knows the machinery and a journalist who won’t look away.

As betrayals stack and bodies fall, the trio races from Boston boardrooms to European safe houses, unspooling a global plot that treats cities as test beds and civilians as data points. Victor is forced to torch his own life’s work to stop what it has become. Eliza risks her career—and her heart—to bring the truth into daylight. Together, they draw the Veil Consortium into the open…knowing that once the ash settles, someone will try to make these wings fly again.