A man dies in an accident he should not have survived. The Institute brings him back. His doctors call his case remarkable. The journalists call it encouraging. His mother forwards an article to everyone she has ever met that calls it a triumph. The man himself goes back to his therapist, who has known him for years, and answers the question she opens with: did dying make you better?

He is calmer now. Less performative. He stays quiet where he used to fill the silence with something clever. He picks up the small ordinary things of his life. He sleeps in the bed he shared with her. He drives where he used to drive. And he begins to notice that the man who came home is not quite the man who died. That his body knows how to continue through this life in moments his mind cannot account for. That the rearview mirror, sometimes, returns a face that is almost his.

The Continuity Protocol is the debut novel and opening book of the Continuity Constellation, a growing series of standalone novels that share one near-future world and quietly rearrange one another the more of them you read. Each book is a complete story on its own. Quiet near-future horror about the comforts people agree to without reading the fine print, and the cost of being the one who is being saved.