He watched from the corner table for six weeks and wrote down everything except the part that mattered.

Chris is thirty-four, new to the city, three years out of the army. He pulls coffee on Maple Street. He learns the regulars by name. He runs the river path on mornings off. The life is small, ordinary, finally his.

A quiet customer at the corner table decides Chris will make an interesting subject.

Chris wakes on a mattress in a grey bedroom with a lamp, a dresser, a rug beside the bed. Everything looks normal until he counts the walls. Four of them, all blank. The door locks from the outside.

His captor visits once a day, sits in the chair, asks questions, writes in a small notebook. He wants to learn what remains of a man once every tool is taken away. He believes he chose a barista.

What does he do the morning he learns otherwise?

First Contact: The Room Is A Lie is the second book in the First Contact series. It is a story about the person you become by choice, tested by someone who only studied the person you were.