The Fugitives

Jeff Engel is a meticulous investigator for the Missing Persons Bureau, the kind of man who can scan a crowd like a deck of cards. One ordinary subway ride turns extraordinary when a fleeting encounter with a mysterious stranger drags him into a city that feels like a dream of chrome towers and silvery bubbles. The streets are populated by people who stare with hollow cheeks, and a uniformed officer in a glittering badge treats Engel as a suspect in a crime he never committed.

The world he has stumbled into is hostile to outsiders; everyone seems to regard him as an alien, even as the bureaucracy runs like a cold, efficient machine. Engel is thrust into a line of gaunt officials, forced to fill out forms while a stern, hatchet‑faced woman watches his every move. As he tries to make sense of the invisible force that knocked him down, the strange city promises both danger and a chance to uncover why he has been pulled into this alien‑hating society.