Brad Walter's story follows a man who turns a private notebook—a ledger of procurement codes, payments, and names—into the instrument that exposes a hidden system of commodified human experimentation. Arrested, caged, and bereaved after his wife's death in an unregulated arena, Brad becomes a witness and a conspirator: he gathers evidence, risks his life to steal prototypes and papers from a perimeter lab, and partners with a tenacious journalist and lawyer, Rosa Vega, to force legal scrutiny.
The ledger threads the plot: it ties donor signatures, lab shipments, and handler schedules to an architect—Rowan Hale Marwick—and to a corporate program that stages human trials as spectacle. Brad's allies (Cruz the cartographer, Myra the medic, Elias and Lyle among others) navigate betrayals, ambushes, and a series of escalating counterstrikes that culminate in public hearings, criminal investigations, and courtroom battles. The arena's defenders retaliate with disinformation, targeted violence, and legal maneuvers, forcing Brad to balance patience in court with direct, morally fraught action.