When environmental engineer Marcus Chen proves there's toxic contamination in the city's water supply, he expects a recall, not a reckoning. Nightmares of drowning follow. The number 3:47 appears where it shouldn't-on clocks, invoices, street signs-as if a turn is being called rather than a time. Faucets whisper. Rooms feel rearranged when nobody's home. His wife, Sarah, and daughter, Emma, are loving yet oddly scripted. Dr Patricia Martinez, the neurologist trying to help, is seeing similar disturbances in other patients. And in the glass-always at the edge of sight-the Watchers.Threaded through it all is a behavioural programme known as The Walk: four stages, quiet rules, no questions. It selects its subjects. It keeps what it likes. As Marcus pushes for answers, he's trapped between two intolerable possibilities: a ruthless human design dismantling chosen lives, or an inherited madness finally breaking surface. Either way, every step forward feels like a step back-toward the first contamination, the first choice, the reason he was noticed at all.THE WALK is a slow-burn psychological thriller about trust, surveillance, and the fragile borders of the mind-ideal for readers who prefer dread that tightens by degrees over cheap jump scares.