Description
True Howard is a 13-year-old coding prodigy with a knack for world-building and a serious case of self-doubt. Living in a cramped apartment with her overwhelmed single mom and genius twin brother West, True escapes reality through an old laptop and a mysterious game-building app she can't remember downloading. But when a petty argument with West spirals into a catastrophic coding error, a virus is born-one that doesn't just destroy her digital world, but hides in the shadows, glamoring reality and infecting everything it touches. As her virtual world crumbles, a charming new boy at school draws True's attention away from the screen and deeper into a game she didn't choose to play. But popularity has a price, and betrayal stings harder when the real world starts falling apart too. With her once-perfect world now warped beyond recognition, True must reunite with West, recruit an unlikely band of middle school misfits, and go full-on hacker rebel to fix what they've unleashed. But the virus is evolving, hiding in code and casting long, monstrous shadows-and it knows she's coming. SHADOW CODE is the thrilling start to a high-stakes, heart-driven sci-fi adventure where saving a world means first believing you're worth the power to do it. Perfect for fans of Ready Player One, Tron, and The Wild Robot, this is a story about tech, truth, and the fight to reclaim your voice-even when the system says you don't have one.
Prologue
