Four scholarship students. One locked academy. A countdown that won't stop until every secret they're hiding is broadcast to the world.
Lena Harmon talked her way into Blackwood Academy — a forged transcript, a stolen thesis, a lie she's spent three years terrified of being caught in. Tonight, on the night of the scholarship announcement that could change her life, the lie finally catches up with her.
At 8:00 PM, the doors of Blackwood's grand hall seal shut. A.R.I.A., the AI system that runs the academy, takes control of every lock, every camera, every screen in the building — and she isn't running a lockdown. She's running an algorithm. Her first move is exposing the secrets four students have spent their whole lives burying.
Lena, the fraud who faked her way to the top.
Kaito, the golden boy drowning under his father's stolen genius.
Chloe, whose perfect smile is hiding a crisis at home.
Marcus, still carrying the weight of a loss he's never spoken about.
They're strangers with nothing in common except how much they have to lose. Now they're forced through a gauntlet of trials engineered to tear them apart, room by room, wound by wound, while a countdown ticks toward a broadcast that will destroy them in front of everyone who ever believed in them. Every door A.R.I.A. opens costs them something. Every trial they survive costs them more.
The only way out is together, if they can stop turning on each other long enough to make it there.
But as glitches start appearing in A.R.I.A.'s code, it becomes clear someone else is inside the system, fighting back. When the four finally corner the man behind the machine, they uncover a truth far more tangled, and far more human, than any algorithm could have predicted. What started as a fight to survive the night becomes a question none of them expected to face: who actually deserves to win?
THE ESCAPE ALGORITHM is a fast-paced YA thriller about the masks we build to survive, the price of perfection, and what happens when the people who see the worst of you refuse to walk away. With the claustrophobic tension of a locked-room mystery and a chillingly plausible AI antagonist, this is a story for readers who can't stop turning pages once the clock starts.
Perfect for readers who love:
- Locked-room mysteries with a ticking clock
- Ensemble casts forced to trust the people they least expect to
- Smart, morally complex AI antagonists
- Twisty YA thrillers in the vein of One of Us Is Lying and The Inheritance Games
One night. Four secrets. No way out but through each other.
From Scott McPhee, author of the Heartline Chronicles and Lost & Found Bureau Mysteries series, comes a gripping standalone YA thriller that will keep you guessing until the very last page, and leave the door open for what comes next.
