The Statute Division

The Statute Division promised order. Instead it armed the powerful with a legal scalpel. When an anonymous memo warns, "Section 12 decides who is a person," clerk Elias Ward teams with audit lawyer Rhea Stone to reconstruct a statute that has been edited in plain sight. Each citation they restore unlocks a sealed chamber, a silent camera, and a ledger that predicts court verdicts before hearings begin. As a national vote looms, bodies vanish from custody and witnesses recant using identical phrases. Someone is writing the country in and out of existence one definition at a time. To stop the repeal that will erase thousands, Rhea must testify under oath against a client she never met—and Elias must prove the law itself forged her signature.