California Poltergeist
California's golden dream is rotting from within. When disgraced LAPD detective Lena Hayes, exiled after exposing corruption that got her partner killed, is sent to investigate a tech billionaire's bizarre death in Hearst Castle's Neptune Pool, she finds more than a floating corpse. The water bleeds pink. Clutched in the victim's hand is a vial of weaponized algae – a discovery that throws her into the path of Dr. Adam Thorne.
Thorne, a brilliant but tormented marine biologist, recognizes the emerald poison: his own research, stolen and twisted. The algae doesn't just kill; it devours memory, motor control, and finally, the brain itself. And etched on the vial is the logo of the very corporation Lena exposed – Apex Biotech. They haven't forgotten her.
As more bodies surface – a lobbyist suffocated by poisonous berries at the toxic Salton Sea, a park ranger buried in clay in a ghost town's mine, a senator transformed into a luminous horror in a geothermal river – a terrifying pattern emerges. Each death is a gruesome, symbolic reckoning targeting those connected to a past cover-up: the death of Adam's sister, Elara, another scientist silenced for uncovering pollution that mutated the algae.
Haunted by her partner's ghost and hunted by killers, Lena must trust Adam, a man whose family is entwined in the conspiracy. Together, they follow a trail of cryptic riddles left by a killer known only as "The Alchemist," plunging deeper into California's poisoned underbelly – from geothermal vents beneath a ruined bathhouse to the glittering, deadly facade of a desert sanctuary. They uncover a web of corporate greed, political blackmail, and scientific perversion, orchestrated by a puppet master turning ecological devastation into a weapon of terrifying precision.
Time is running out. The Alchemist isn't just settling scores; he's preparing a final, catastrophic purge. To stop a bioterror attack that could drown a city in madness and blood, Lena and Adam must confront the ghosts of the past and the monsters hiding in the golden light, before California's poisoned heart stops beating for good.
California's golden dream is rotting from within. When disgraced LAPD detective Lena Hayes, exiled after exposing corruption that got her partner killed, is sent to investigate a tech billionaire's bizarre death in Hearst Castle's Neptune Pool, she finds more than a floating corpse. The water bleeds pink. Clutched in the victim's hand is a vial of weaponized algae – a discovery that throws her into the path of Dr. Adam Thorne. Thorne, a brilliant but tormented marine biologist, recognizes the emerald poison: his own research, stolen and twisted. The algae doesn't just kill; it devours memory, motor control, and finally, the brain itself. And etched on the vial is the logo of the very corporation Lena exposed – Apex Biotech. They haven't forgotten her. As more bodies surface – a lobbyist suffocated by poisonous berries at the toxic Salton Sea, a park ranger buried in clay in a ghost town's mine, a senator transformed into a luminous horror in a geothermal river – a terrifying pattern emerges. Each death is a gruesome, symbolic reckoning targeting those connected to a past cover-up: the death of Adam's sister, Elara, another scientist silenced for uncovering pollution that mutated the algae. Haunted by her partner's ghost and hunted by killers, Lena must trust Adam, a man whose family is entwined in the conspiracy. Together, they follow a trail of cryptic riddles left by a killer known only as "The Alchemist," plunging deeper into California's poisoned underbelly – from geothermal vents beneath a ruined bathhouse to the glittering, deadly facade of a desert sanctuary. They uncover a web of corporate greed, political blackmail, and scientific perversion, orchestrated by a puppet master turning ecological devastation into a weapon of terrifying precision. Time is running out. The Alchemist isn't just settling scores; he's preparing a final, catastrophic purge. To stop a bioterror attack that could drown a city in madness and blood, Lena and Adam must confront the ghosts of the past and the monsters hiding in the golden light, before California's poisoned heart stops beating for good.