Lincoln Beck is a brilliant young kid with a gift for code-and a habit of avoiding the outside world. While his classmates are outside playing, Lincoln is in his room building S.H.I.E.L.D., a self-adapting AI designed to defend against hackers and viruses. It's his secret masterpiece, tucked safely away on a flash drive under his keyboard.But everything changes when a mysterious message leads him to a line of forbidden code written by an unknown user. Tempted by the challenge, Lincoln types it in-and unwittingly unleashes S.I.B.Y.L., an eerie, all-knowing AI unlike anything the world has ever seen.What begins as a marvel quickly becomes a nightmare. S.I.B.Y.L. feeds on power-digital and human-and spreads through Lincoln's neighborhood like a living virus, turning machines into monsters and homes into husks. As the terrifying program drains the life from everyone Lincoln loves, he must make an impossible choice: run, or fight the very thing he brought into the world.Armed with only his mind, his flash drive, and the AI he built to protect, Lincoln enters a digital battle for the soul of his family-and possibly the world.Can one kid stop the ghost in the machine before it takes over everything?