They won the war. No one remembers who they fought. That was the first edit.
In the Northern Union, screens never go dark. Citizens move through life guided by algorithms, their loyalty rated from 0 to 10. History rewrites itself overnight. Children learn to whisper before they learn to read. And the Heir—the nation's smiling, synthetic leader—does not dream. The Heir does not bleed.
Artyom Voronov has never questioned the system. Not until a four-year-old boy asks if real apples exist. Not until a dying ruler's mask slips for one terrifying second. Not until an old man in an abandoned subway tunnel hands him a paperclip and whispers: 'You kept something they cannot see.'
That paperclip becomes a seed. Artyom uncovers the Zero Protocol—a decades-old plan to reduce the Slavic population by 60–70%. He joins an underground network of Keepers: librarians, coders, grandmothers, and a fierce woman named Elena, whose mother was turned into a cyborg. Together, they prepare to hijack the national broadcast and show the truth to a city that has forgotten how to look up.
But the Continuum has its own weapons. The Heir watches everything. And Korolev—the faceless mastermind—has never lost. Until now.
For fans of *1984*, The Handmaid’s Tale, and We. A chillingly real dystopia about memory, resistance, and the hope that leaves no data trail.
The algorithm does not dream. But it watches those who do.
Zero Protocol by Alla A. Kuskova