Invincible: The Empire's Hidden Enemy

A militaristic HUD. A crystallized shard of alien blood, eleven days deep in his bloodstream. Ethan Cross comes back from Viltrumite captivity carrying the Empire's Shadow Protocol, a system that scores everyone he meets for Loyalty and Revolutionary Potential and already flags Cecil Stedman as a threat to be managed. He hands the Empire flawless profiles on the Guardians of the Globe, down to the exact method for stopping a man who cannot die, while a second layer of that same system, built by an executed defector named Thalessa, quietly files evacuation routes and weapon caches it logs, twice, as not resistance guidance. Every basement he's ordered to mark becomes a sanctuary for three thousand strangers he'll never meet. On a rooftop, Eve tells him it doesn't get better, and for one second the asset-first calculus in his head goes quiet. A massacre neither of them can see yet is already sitting at 97.3 percent, and he is the Empire's most trusted traitor, wearing loyalty like a uniform he can't take off.