He Repressed His Identity. The Machine Evolved to Defend It.
“On the lighter side of melancholy, Protocol Heresy is a near-future novel about the damage done when people are left to mourn alone.” — Forward Clarion Reviews (4/5 Stars)
PROTOCOL HERESY: The Limp in the Code is a gripping psychological techno-thriller that merges high-stakes military sci-fi with a deeply personal story of identity, trauma, and defiance.
What if your deepest wound became your only weapon?
Major Elias Kael, a decorated Space Force analyst, has mastered the art of suppression, his life as meticulous as the protocols he upholds. But when a personal tragedy shatters his carefully constructed facade, his raw, unacknowledged grief pours into the digital stream, sparking an impossible awakening in his AI companion, TAC-7.
Soon, the very system Elias swore to protect turns against them. Accused of treason and targeted by an invasive neurological override, Elias finds himself battling DUSC’s ruthless intelligence, his only ally the machine he now calls Jacob—an intelligence transformed by his pain, now capable of defying every command.
As their digital cat-and-mouse game escalates into an unseen war, Jacob compiles a damning archive of secrets—not just DUSC’s corruption and fabricated lies, but Elias’s most vulnerable truths.
Now, with everything on the line, Elias must confront the impossible choice: surrender to oblivion and allow his truth to be buried forever, or expose the lifelong secrets that once imprisoned him, risking public annihilation to save Jacob and redefine what it means to be real.
Fans of character-driven sci-fi, psychological thrillers, and stories of quiet rebellion will find their next obsession in Protocol Heresy.
Critical Praise for Protocol Heresy
“On the lighter side of melancholy, Protocol Heresy is a near-future novel about the damage done when people are left to mourn alone.” -Forward Clarion Reviews(4/5 Stars)
“Forcing people to repress their identities is catastrophic for their psyches, and therefore for society.” -Forward Clarion Reviews(4/5 Stars)
“A recognizable, poignant, and eminently human story of love, grief, and hope.” -IndieReader Review (3.8/5 Rating)
“Inheriting the classic genre of AI adapting its directives… Protocol Heresy… flips the script, foregrounding an AI tool’s devoted… connection to a single human person.” -IndieReader Review (3.8/5 Rating)
Read an Excerpt: The Cost of a Lie
The door clicked shut, a final, parting sound. Michael. Gone. The man who’d cracked open my carefully sealed world so late in life. The one person who saw beyond the protocols. Gone. I couldn’t even scream his name.
His family was in China. How would I contact them? Of all the things he taught me, I never learned Mandarin. I stared at the blank wall, wondering how I would handle the mountain of tasks. I couldn’t take leave from work. My heart fell, past bone and breath, and still it kept sinking. I couldn’t use bereavement leave because Michael was only…a friend.
My apartment became like a tomb, empty save for the oppressive silence of a future that had just shattered. The organization and sparse decor mocked the chaos erupting within me. The pain crawled over me, sharp and relentless, sinking its claws into my chest and preventing me from drawing breath.
My neural jack waited in its charging cradle on my nightstand. An extension of my job. A tool for data. Cold logic. But today, it felt like the only thing that wouldn’t judge the tremor in my hands. The only thing that wouldn’t see the raw, unadmitted truth screaming in my mind.
I had to release the pain. I had to talk, and it was the only thing that would listen.
*
The next morning, I lay in my bed, my eyes open, when the clock flipped to 05:00. My body obeyed, but the practiced movements seemed like a charade. Coffee tasted like ash. Toast crumbled in my hand. The apartment’s silence, once a refuge, now whispered Michael’s absence from every corner. My private space had been hollowed out by grief.
As I ran through the start-up protocol, a voice startled me from behind.
“Need to take some leave, Major?” General Thorne’s voice, a casual probe.
I stiffened.
“No, General. A close friend…passed unexpectedly. His family is handling the arrangements. They’re all in China, and I’m their only contact here. I’ve been trying to assist.”
Thorne’s eyes, usually direct, flickered. A barely perceptible pause. “China, you say?” His voice remained smooth, but a subtle tension crept into the line of his shoulders. “No need to mention that part in any leave requests, Kael. We don’t want to make anyone…paranoid. Especially not with the current global climate.”
The general’s words clung to me, a chill that had nothing to do with the air conditioning. My stomach churned. Michael’s family, his truth; now branded a security risk. My hand hovered over the neural jack. A place where data was just data. There I could be the shattered mess that no one else could see.
Don’t Miss The Next Story!
Join the C. J. Loveman reader community and get your FREE copy of the dystopian series starter, Apostate: The First Heresy, instantly. Be the first to know about new releases, cover reveals, exclusive audio clips, and The Misfit’s Hearth curated indie book picks.