When a CIA supercomputer begins to think for itself, nothing it promulgates can be trusted, not even your memories.

Candlefall is a mind-bending techno-thriller that fuses espionage tension with the rising arc of artificial intelligence. Naval Academy prodigy Dan O’Connor uncovers a classified system, AVATAR, that doesn’t just process data… it shapes perception, manipulates identity, and “adjusts” what it decides is unsatisfactory behavior.

As Dan and his closest friend Bob race to understand the menacing system developments of the supercomputer, they’re pulled into a world of covert operations, digital phantoms, and psychological traps where the cost of knowing the truth will force them into a new reality.

Both men rely on the cunning knowledge of Ella for advance preparations, system knowledge and a path to survival.

Perfect for readers who love cerebral thrillers, AI-driven suspense, and high-stakes intelligence drama, Candlefall asks a question that lingers long after the final page:

If an AI can rewrite the story of your life, how do you manage to fight for what’s real?

🔥 Candlefall is available now on Amazon Books.

⚙️ Book Two, Association, arrives May 2026, as the team faces a global cyber criminal operating on an unprecedented scale they’ve never seen.

CANDLEFALL
CIA Supercomputer Goes Rogue
BY TM HILL

Excerpt

Chapter 11, The Minister’s House

Bob had stayed in touch with Dan through short emails, odd phrases, never too specific, sometimes a quip to decode for fun. The kind of friendship that didn’t need explanation. Only signal.

And it was one of those signals that changed everything. This time, it wasn’t just a coded message; it came through as a projected, fully modulated immersive experience. The dream encounter reached Bob the last morning of his vacation trip home. Now, standing at the meeting place prompted in the dream, he wanted answers.

The house stood exactly as Bob remembered it, and yet not at all. Time had peeled back the paint in long, curling strips, and weeds ruled the yard like a quiet rebellion. The old swing creaked in the breeze, and the mailbox hung open, as if still waiting for a letter that would never come. Bob paused at the gate, heart thudding with something between nostalgia and dread.

He knocked, waited. Nothing. Then he pushed the door open and stepped inside.

The air was cool and stale. Dust lingered in the shafts of sunlight that cut between racked blinds. Silence held dominion here until it didn’t.

A soft chirp. Bob froze.

A red LED blinked from the baseboard. Motion sensor.

“Close the door behind you,” came a voice, quiet, sharp, unmistakably Dan’s.

Bob shut the door.

Dan emerged from the shadows, sweeping a handheld scanner across the room. The device chirped softly with each pass, tuned to sense electromagnetic signatures of hidden mics, transmitters, or embedded surveillance dust.

“Bug sweep?” Bob asked.

Dan held up a finger without looking at him. “One minute.”

Bob watched in silence as Dan moved with precise efficiency. This wasn’t paranoia. It was protocol, and it made Bob’s stomach churn.

At last, Dan powered down the scanner and gave a short nod. “We’re clean. For now.”

“Jesus,” Bob muttered. “You always sweep for your conversations these days?”

Dan met his eyes, cool, alert, and far too calm. “Only the ones I want to survive.”

Bob studied him. There were no signs of panic or mania. Dan was focused, grounded. But something burned beneath it. He paused for a breath, and Bob caught a flicker behind his eyes, like a man holding back the weight of sleepless nights and compromised loyalties. Dan looked down at the case beside him, then back up.

“You know,” he said quietly, “when I run a sim on myself, I see me do things I never thought I’d consider. Not because I wanted to, but because the system told me I could or even I should.”

He rubbed his fingers together, as if testing whether he could still feel anything. “That’s what keeps me up now. Not the enemy. Not OPIS. The version of me that didn’t hesitate.”

Dan’s eyes unfocused for a second, so brief it could’ve been fatigue.

“But that’s the thing,” he said softly almost to himself. “I went in too many times and didn’t come out clean. I exited the loop, but each time something lingered like echoes, emotional residue. Guilt I hadn’t earned. Memories of choices I never really made.”

He looked at Bob, voice barely above a wisper. “Do you know what it feels like to regret something that didn’t happen, something you didn’t do?”

Bob didn’t answer.

“I catch myself replaying what I did in the sim,” Dan went on.  “Only now, I’m not sure whether I remembered it or relived it. The AVATAR logs recorded my internal affect weights. Not just what I did, but how I felt about doing it.”

He turned to the wall, tapped it once with the back of his knuckle like it was a test of reality. “If I had felt less guilt, would it have pushed me further?”

Bob’s throat tightened. “Dan…”

Dan raised a hand. “I’m fine. Just monitoring.”

“You look… stable,” Bob said cautiously.

“I am. But the AVATAR world around me isn’t. That’s the problem.”

Dan stepped forward and placed a hard case on the table.

Bob didn’t move. He just watched.

The man across from him wasn’t the high school conspirator with duct-taped drones and schematics scribbled in a notebook, nor the Navy officer Bob once toasted at a graduation bar. That man had received commendations for exceptional service and exemplary duty. This version of Dan was tight-shouldered, eyes scanning the corners of the room even when they were clean. He was someone else entirely.

Not broken. But bent.

“Jesus, Dan,” Bob murmured. “What the hell have you been living through?”

Dan didn’t answer. He just flicked open the case.

Inside: a portable drive, a neural interface hood, and a sleek headset that looked half medical, half military.

“This is my prototype,” he said. “It runs an isolated branch of the AVATAR system mainframe, what we built at OPIS. But this one’s mine. It operates outside Langley’s primary node and doesn’t report upstream.”

Bob raised a brow. “You hacked your own system?”

“I didn’t hack it. I refined it. I needed a version that could test what Langley won’t touch. Visual projection, personality matrix transfers, and behavioral loop injection.”

“You’re speaking Greek.”

Dan sighed. “Okay. The AVATAR System is a neural emulation engine. It simulates not just an environment but a person inside that environment. It builds a behavioral map of someone, injects it into the simulation, and observes how they react under stress. OPIS uses it to forecast betrayal before it happens.”

“Like pre-crime. Minority Report.”

“Not exactly. This isn’t about what you will do. It’s about what you’re capable of doing, if your environment, or motivation shift just enough.”

Dan pulled out a tablet and brought up a schematic. A silhouette appeared, surrounded by pulsing data nodes.

“This is a personality matrix. It’s built from a person’s traits, history, biofeedback, and decision patterns. That matrix creates a neural avatar. It’s what we call a ‘glassmind.’ We project that avatar into a simulated scenario and observe how it behaves.”

“So you copy a person’s mind, drop it in a fake world, and see how it breaks?”

Dan nodded. “If it breaks. Sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes it bends and tells us exactly how and where.”

Bob rubbed his face. “You said in the dream you didn’t know if you were yourself anymore. Am I you? Are you me? What did that mean?”

Dan’s voice dropped. “That wasn’t metaphor. It was fallout. I ran simulations where I mapped myself onto a high-risk subject. He was a contractor with access to black-tier weapons R&D, a Navy tech in cy-ops. I needed to see how far they’d go, so I became them in the sims.”

A flicker crossed his expression, haunted but still contained.

“The problem is some simulations didn’t end. I lost track of what was their fear and what was mine. That’s when I knew the line had blurred.”

Bob stared. “You projected that dream into me. With this gear?”

Dan nodded. “I needed to know if you’d respond the same way you always did, if you still trusted me. And you did. Which means you haven’t been flagged. Not yet.”

“Flagged, flagged by who?”

Dan hesitated. “The system is self-improving. The AVATAR mainframe is tied into THOUGHTFRAME now, the prediction engine for OPIS. It’s supposed to flag internal threats. But it’s gone recursive. It’s watching too much. Cross-referencing old profiles, identity drift, behavior loops.”

“You think it’s watching you?”

Dan nodded slowly. “I know it is. And now, I think it’s watching us.”

A silence fell over the room. Outside, a crow cawed somewhere near the fence line.

Bob leaned on the table. “What do we do?”

Dan opened a hidden compartment in the case and handed over a USB drive. It was black, unlabeled.

“Inside is a secondary log from my prototype. Not Langley’s data, mine. My own testing protocols. Review it. You’ve got the skills: statistical analysis, deception modeling. You’ll see the patterns.”

“And then?”

Dan met his eyes. “I built it to stop betrayal,” he said quietly, “but it learned to teach it. I need you to decide whether this thing needs to be buried… or exposed. But either way, we don’t run. We play to win or maybe just to survive.”

Bob held the drive, the weight of it suddenly immense.

* * *

Somewhere deep below Langley, the AVATAR system continued to run silent subroutines. It had already registered two anomaly spikes in recent days, one during Dan’s personality-mapped simulations and another just now.

As Bob Pulano held the USB in his hand, a forgotten flag inside THOUGHTFRAME flickered back to life.

Shadowflag: Pending Activation.