In 2036, Kaius Vinter, a 42-year-old former Interpol data analyst haunted by a mysterious incident in Poland, lives a quiet life in Hamburg consulting against cybercrime. Once a master pattern recognizer, he vanished from the official world years ago. His only connection to his past life is Eva Gyllen, a Swedish lawyer and former partner dedicated to fighting human trafficking in the Baltic Sea. When Eva's contact disappears, Kaius receives a cryptic, password-protected distress call intended for him, suggesting Eva herself has been kidnapped, not for ransom, but revenge. Forced back into the dangerous game he left behind, Kaius operates without official backing, launching a desperate search for Eva while simultaneously investigating why his name is suddenly on the Interpol watch list.
As Kaius closes in on Eva's location, he uncovers a shocking truth: Eva orchestrated her own disappearance. Driven by the belief that Kaius's data analysis methods were unwittingly used to identify victims of human trafficking, she sought to lure him into confronting his past. However, her plan spirals out of control when it's revealed that the organization she was working with is not a justice-seeking group, but a powerful international crime syndicate that has been manipulating her for their own ends – an international data business turning anonymous statistics into intelligence for targeting. Kaius must save Eva not just from external threats, but from her own self-destructive path, ultimately exposing the cruel data trade and facing the complex, often dirty, truth about their intertwined pasts before retreating into hiding in Estonia, forever changed but with a fragile hope for reconnection with Eva.
