Static

My name is Nova Reyes. I'm seventeen years old, I fix receiver bands for a living, and I have never once heard the world without the Tone in it. In Relay City, the Tone is everything. It rises through every band in the lower wards at oh-six-hundred, warm honey behind the eyes, the edges of the world going soft and gold. It keeps the grief manageable. It keeps the streets calm. It keeps everyone — tuned. Green means it's working. Green means you're safe. Nova has believed that her whole life. She and her brother Dax survived the aftershock that took their parents, survived the Hush years the old ones whisper about, and built something like a family in a two-room flat above a laundry that never closes. Her world is small, warm, and tuned — oatcakes and bitter tea, noodle carts and tuned laughter, Dax checking her band light every single morning like a prayer. Then somebody's band goes red on the east docks. And Nova — who has spent her life repairing the bands that keep the city calm — starts to wonder what the Tone is actually doing to them. What it costs. And what would happen if someone finally turned it off. Static is the first book of The Signal Trilogy: a slow-burn dystopian thriller about the most comfortable cage ever built, the girl who maintains it, and the first crack in the calm. Perfect for fans of thought-provoking YA sci-fi where the scariest thing isn't the monster — it's how much you love the leash.