In Westbridge City, corruption doesn’t hide in the shadows— it hides in glass towers, million-dollar smiles, and men who never hear the word “no.” Cael Maddox, a brilliant but underpaid computer science graduate, works as a personal driver for people who never bother remembering his name. One night, he’s asked to transport a “package” with no witnesses. What he finds inside the trunk is not cargo— but a girl. Bound. Gagged. Terrified. A girl who should’ve been safe in school: Aria Lorne. Cael knows one thing—reporting this will get him killed long before it saves her. His boss, the powerful and untouchable Regis Calder, has buried bigger scandals with smaller shovels. But Aria’s disappearance is only the surface of something far darker. When Cael digs into Calder’s encrypted files, he stumbles upon OLD GODS— a mobile game with no public downloads, no ads, and no players. Except the wealthy. Inside the game’s “market,” every character is a real person. Every bid, a real abduction. Every transaction, a crime with no witnesses. Aria Lorne is one of them. To destroy the system, Cael teams up with Nova Kestrel, a volatile teenage cyber-prodigy with too many secrets and too many enemies. Together, they uncover: a private bank laundering millions politicians trading human lives like digital assets hackers who never show their real face and a hierarchy of “players” who believe themselves gods As the web tightens, Cael must choose— Save Aria, the girl whose life he accidentally delivered into hell, or protect Nova, the only ally keeping him alive. Because in Westbridge City, saving someone always means betraying someone else. And the Abduction Protocol has already begun.