The Syndicate: Bloodline & Ascension
In the neon-drenched shadows of a crumbling world, Lucas Thorne was forged in the Pit—a Siberian black site where the Syndicate turned children into weapons using the Glass Virus, an alien pathogen that evolves flesh into living, translucent blue diamond. It grants godlike power, immortality, and a hive-mind connection... but only until the host calcifies into eternal, static perfection.
Lucas is the only survivor who escaped with his free will intact. Once the Syndicate's deadliest assassin known as "The Ghost," he now wages a one-man war against the cabal that created him: the Twelve Apostles, a secret empire controlling banking, war, media, tech, and more from the darkness.
Armed with his cursed crystal arm that hums with destructive resonance, the sonic Shatter Pistol, and a found family of elite operatives—his ruthless strategist wife Elena Vance, his Machiavellian father Alexander Vane, his neural-linked sister Aria, and the unbreakable duo Tank and Kain—Lucas dismantles the Apostles one by one. From skyscraper drops in Tokyo to underwater train crashes, Vatican infiltrations to Antarctic crystal gardens, and high-stakes poker in Vegas strongholds, every victory costs him another piece of his humanity.
As crystallization spreads across his body and the virus threatens to turn the world into Marcus Vane's twisted "Garden of Eden," Lucas must confront his bloodline's sins, forge uneasy alliances, and ascend from warlord to benevolent Grandmaster. But greater threats loom: echoes of the hive mind, extradimensional Architects who seeded the virus as a harvest experiment, and the looming Convergence that could merge realities into flawless stasis.
In a high-octane blend of gun-fu action, cyberpunk intrigue, body horror transhumanism, and operatic family drama, Lucas fights not just for revenge—but to prove that messy, painful humanity is worth saving over cold, crystalline perfection.
Will he shatter the Syndicate... or become the monster it always wanted?