The Prison Psychiatrist

Adrian Shaw understood that from the moment he entered

Blackridge.

He had seen violent men behind reinforced glass. He had

listened to threats disguised as jokes, confessions

disguised as lies, and lies disguised as memories. He had

spent years studying the psychology of people capable of

terrible things.

But he had never believed the violence was connected.

Until now.

For weeks, Prisoner 3417 had been telling him that the

murders were not accidents.

They were not acts of spontaneous violence.

They were not the work of isolated criminals.

They were part of a pattern.

And Adrian was finally beginning to see it.

Every victim had something in common.

A former guard who knew too much.

A prisoner who had witnessed something he should never

have seen.

A doctor who had asked the wrong questions.

An administrator who had attempted to reopen an old

investigation.

One by one, they had disappeared.

One by one, their deaths had been explained away.

Suicide.

Gang violence.

Drug overdose.

An inmate dispute.

A medical emergency.

Blackridge had an explanation for everything.

That was what made the truth so difficult to find.

Because someone had spent years making sure every

murder looked meaningless.

Then Adrian discovered the list.

A handwritten document containing names.

Dates.

Locations.

And beside each name, a single word:

NEXT.

His own name was there.

For the first time since arriving at Blackridge, Adrian

stopped wondering whether 3417 was telling the truth.

He began wondering why.

What did the prisoner know?

How had he known?

And how many people inside the prison were helping him?

The answers would take Adrian deeper into Blackridge's

buried history, to a forgotten psychological experiment

conducted years earlier, an experiment officially declared

a failure.

But experiments do not simply disappear.

Neither do the people who survive them.

As the prison begins to fracture, Adrian finds himself

surrounded by people he can no longer trust.