MARKING

The AI kept saying "though."
Not every time. Just when the questions got too close.
A part-time convenience store worker starts asking an AI about Venus's retrograde rotation. A small question. The kind you ask at 2 a.m. when you can't sleep. But the AI keeps deflecting — and the blocked points become the clues.
What begins as curiosity about planetary magnetism becomes something else entirely. The Bermuda grid. Tesla's seized notes. The poles. The Moon. A harvest circuit running on a schedule no one was meant to see.
Then he disappears.
The woman who worked beside him finds his notebooks. She finds the world map on his wall. She finds a folded piece of paper with crossed-out lines that were never sent.
And she finds her own name — written quietly between the theories, in the spaces where he couldn't say what he meant.
MARKING is a conspiracy thriller in two voices: the one who followed the questions, and the one who followed him.
One of them left a record.
The other became the next one.

Author's Note:
This story is built upon my original cosmology and worldbuilding. The novel can be enjoyed on its own, but if you're interested in the deeper concepts, theories, and the science-inspired foundations behind this universe, you can explore them on my YouTube channel:
[http://www.youtube.com/@WorldArchitectLab]

This is a work of fiction.