Ruby fled her father and the oilfields of rural Colorado to study physics in Boston, determined to succeed where her late mother’s career collapsed. Now, as a graduate student developing a breakthrough theory of dark matter, she discovers her advisor has been quietly rewriting her results to serve his own ambitions.

When Ruby falls for Noah, a postdoc recruited into a secretive AI project fighting climate disinformation, her ideas—and her family's past—are pulled into the crosshairs of a new kind of weapon, one capable of shaping what the world believes is true. As her advisor tightens his grip and Noah’s project spirals from whisper campaigns to global sabotage, Ruby realizes she’s caught in a battle for something far greater than her science. To stop the unraveling—of her career, of civilization, of truth itself—she must decide what she believes and what she is willing to sacrifice in a world where reality can be faked at any depth.