The Only Road to Mercy Island

About this book:

Twelve miles of asphalt. One way on. One way off. And something beneath the marsh has decided the road is a mistake.

When a pristine section of State Route 9 vanishes overnight—cleanly sliced from the landscape without a sound, a stone, or a single tire track—road warden Sam Finch knows the salt marsh didn't take it. But the island's brand-new Sentinel surveillance towers insist nothing happened. Their feeds show unbroken pavement. Their algorithms register zero defects. And the state's automated repair system refuses to acknowledge a hole that doesn't exist in the digital twin.

As the missing stretch widens by the hour, swallowing lanes and a salt truck whole, Sam and a reluctant tech specialist uncover the truth buried in century-old survey maps: the highway was paved over something the original builders marked *The Old Floor*. The towers weren't installed to watch the tide. They were installed to watch whatever lives underneath. And now the marsh is reclaiming its boundary, one perfect, silent foot at a time—rewriting reality faster than the network can correct it.