Echoes of Equilibrium

A diplomat is murdered in her locked quarters seventeen days before signing a historic peace accord. Her door logs confirm no one entered. The logs are telling the truth.

When Chief Negotiator Lyra Valen is found dead on Equilibrium Space Station, Inspector Arin arrives to untangle a murder that technically couldn’t have happened. Armed with a controversial neural implant that reads emotional residue off physical objects, Arin navigates a maze of station politics, bitter rivalries and deeply guarded secrets.

Every suspect, from Lyra’s clandestine lover to her fiercest political rivals, has a motive, and every alibi holds firm. As Arin delves into the nine hundred pages of the treaty Lyra died to complete, a single, devastating flaw surfaces in the data: a truth so explosive that exposing it will shatter the peace, while concealing it will let a killer walk free.

Atmospheric, intricate and deeply emotional, Echoes of Equilibrium is a sci-fi whodunit about the cost of compromise, the weight of small choices and the devastating price of peace.

The first case in a sequence. The detective it introduces will return, and so will the questions this one leaves open.