The Chariot
Universe
The characters in the novel existed before page one. These are the companion pieces — prequel fiction set in the same world, following the same people, before everything went wrong.
The Pulse
Peggy Malone, Army nurse, Brooke Army Medical Center, San Antonio. Thirty years before the events of the novel. A young woman who learns to find the person still present underneath the damage — and address that person directly, not the chart.
Read the story →
The Human Thread
Pat King, Executive Assistant, VA Central Office, Washington DC. Two years before the events of the novel. The woman who holds the institution together — one phone call, one name remembered, one human thread at a time.
Read the story →
What the Pipe Knows
Mike Sanders, age twelve, Houston. A Saturday at the refinery with his father Walt. The day a working man’s metaphor for a dying pipe became the operating system underneath everything Mike would go on to do.
Read the story →
The Long Way Home
Phill Dawson, Marine Corps Staff Sergeant, Vienna, Virginia. A Vietnam veteran comes home to a country that has moved on without him — and finds his way back to himself.
Read the story →
He Always Did Have a Knack
Nathan Thorne and Mike Sanders, Air Intelligence Agency, San Antonio. Thirty years before the events of the novel. A friendship built on hardware, and the small decisive moment that changes Mike’s life.
Read the story →
Seventeen Minutes
Cass Reynolds, 1st Lieutenant, Army Signal Corps, outside Fallujah. Twenty-one years before she becomes the VA’s Chief Information Officer. A dead radio, one wounded soldier, and the seventeen minutes that decide who she’ll be at every desk she ever sits behind.
Read the story →
Grand Central
Chris Harding, Senior IT Systems Architect, VA Central Office. One year before the events of the novel. He hands the woman he’s falling for the one theory he should have kept to himself — and doesn’t notice the pause before she smiles again.
Read the story →
Full Credit
Bryce Foster, CISA, restless and rich enough not to care. A patch nobody credits him for, a training class he talks back to, a name passed along at dinner by a man who’ll never know what he set in motion. He said yes before anyone finished the pitch.
Read the story →
In Order
Ann Deering has always known where everything is. A story about a precise woman, a man with a rubber band around his wallet, and the price she almost paid to become someone else.
Read the story →
What to Ask For
Vanessa Greer, high school history teacher, Northern Virginia. Years before the events of the novel. A neurology referral, a receptionist who won’t budge, and the exact sentence her mother teaches her to repeat until someone finally does.
Read the story →
First Entry
Tiana Brooks, campaign volunteer, Hampton Roads, Virginia. Nineteen years before she runs a Congressional hearing room. A five-thousand-dollar check, a citation she never spends, and the exact moment she learns what a favor is actually worth.
Read the story →
Second Row
Solana Morales, investigative journalist, Capitol Wire, Washington DC. Three years before the events of the novel. The first time she learned exactly what a true story could cost someone else — and decided the byline was worth it anyway.
Read the story →
Within Acceptable Parameters
Victor Radek, Staff Sergeant, Air Intelligence Agency, San Antonio. Thirty years before his arrest. The man who handed Nathan Thorne the argument that made everything possible — and never knew what he’d built.
Read the story →
WAKE.UP
CHARIOT Program. Air Intelligence Agency, 1996. A distributed control architecture program terminated on budget grounds — sixty-four fragments left running in OT lab devices with no deactivation procedure. The document that closed the file and missed what the file contained.
Read the artifact →More Universe Fiction
Additional companion stories in development, expanding the world before the novel’s publication.
In DevelopmentThe Chariot Protocol
CHARIOT. Veterans Day. The only man who can stop it and the key his dead friend left behind. Publication forthcoming.
Coming SoonNew stories, when they’re ready.
No noise — just notification when new work is published.