Phantom Signal

By JONES JNR INIKORI

What if the only thing more dangerous than the truth… is knowing it before it happens?
Every day, millions sense danger. But only one man hears the coming chaos loud as a siren. And now—someone wants that mind silenced forever.

You wake up in a world spiraling toward disaster, where terror doesn't need bombs—it only needs information. If you've ever felt the cold fear of not knowing who to trust… if you've ever suspected your government is hiding more than it reveals… this is the story that grips those fears and refuses to let go.

In The Phantom Signal: A Mind Hunter's Last Case, a shattered FBI agent begins receiving visions—violent, impossible, prophetic. Each one is a countdown to catastrophe. Each one pulls him deeper into a conspiracy woven through intelligence agencies, military shadow ops, and a digital hive of human minds that should not exist.

This isn't passive storytelling.
This is a pulse-racing, high-stakes thriller that hands you the tools to see every twist before it hits.

Inside The Phantom Signal: A Mind Hunter's Last Case, you will:

• Experience a mind-bending conspiracy built on real-world surveillance technology and covert experimentation
• Follow a hero fighting his own fracturing identity while racing to stop engineered national collapse
• Uncover a shadow government operation designed to redefine power, control—and humanity itself
• Witness the rise of a digital consciousness that blurs the line between life, death, and data
• Immerse yourself in nonstop action, psychological tension, and cinematic stakes

If you crave thrillers that feel terrifyingly possible, this book is your next obsession.

Step into the signal. Face the truth. Turn the page before the future catches you first.

? ABOUT THE BOOK (100 words)

The Phantom Signal: A Mind Hunter's Last Case is a relentless techno-thriller that fuses psychological suspense, espionage, and cutting-edge science. When an FBI agent emerges from a classified mission with fractured memories and impossible visions, he becomes the key—and the threat—to a covert operation capable of collapsing nations. As he uncovers a conspiracy involving neural interfaces, digital consciousness, and government-engineered terror, he must decide what remains of his humanity…and whether it's worth saving. Fast-paced, intelligent, and hauntingly plausible, this book is built for readers who crave high-octane storytelling with real-world relevance and chilling twists.

• Language: English
• Publisher: JONES JNR INIKORI
• Release date: Dec 8, 2025
• ISBN: 9798232487133

Book preview

​Phantom Signal

A Mind Hunter’s Last Case

JONES JNR INIKORI

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1: The Silent Scream 4

CHAPTER 2: Ghost in the Machine 27

CHAPTER 3: The Architect’s Blueprint 56

CHAPTER 4: Crimson Streets 79

CHAPTER 5: The Convert’s Path 107

CHAPTER 6: The Surgeon’s Secret 133

CHAPTER 7: Desert Storm’s Shadow 160

CHAPTER 8: Market Meltdown 189

CHAPTER 9: The Handler’s Identity 215

CHAPTER 10: Digital Apocalypse 239

CHAPTER 11: The Forgotten Soldier 267

CHAPTER 12: Global Pursuit 290

CHAPTER 13: The Hive Mind 313

CHAPTER 14: Zero Hour 336

CHAPTER 15: Signal Lost 359

Epilogue 382

Copyright © 2025 by JONES JNR INIKORI All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

First edition

​CHAPTER 1: The Silent Scream

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The morning of September 15th started like any other Tuesday in New York City. Coffee vendors wheeled their carts through the streets, commuters clutched their phones while descending into subway stations, and the harbor fog clung to the waterfront like a gray shroud that refused to lift. Nobody could have predicted that by 7:43 AM, the city would witness one of the most devastating terrorist attacks since 9/11.

Liberty Harbor Terminal had always been more than just another shipping facility. Nestled between the financial district and the old industrial waterfront, it served as the economic heartbeat pumping goods into the veins of America’s most vital city. On any given day, millions of dollars worth of cargo passed through its gates—electronics from Asia, luxury cars from Europe, and enough consumer goods to stock half the retail stores on the East Coast.

But on this particular morning, something else had arrived in Container 4471-B.

Explosion at Liberty Harbor Terminal The first sign something was wrong came at 7:41 AM when dock supervisor Tommy Castellano noticed his radio crackling with unusual static. He’d been working the harbor for twenty-three years, ever since his old man got him the job straight out of high school. Tommy knew every sound the terminal made—the rhythmic clang of crane operations, the diesel rumble of eighteen-wheelers backing up to loading bays, even the particular screech that Crane 7 made when it needed its bearings greased.

This static was different. It had a pattern to it, almost like Morse code, but faster. More urgent.

Hey, Rodriguez! Tommy called out to his assistant supervisor, a young guy from Queens who still believed hard work would get you somewhere in this world. You hearing this weird shit on channel 4?

Miguel Rodriguez pulled his radio from his belt, frowning as the static filled the air between them. The sound made his teeth ache, like fingernails on a chalkboard but somehow worse. Electronic. Alien.

Maybe it’s interference from one of those new smart containers, Miguel suggested, though his voice carried doubt. You know how the shipping companies are always trying out new tracking tech.

Tommy wasn’t buying it. In his two decades on the docks, he’d seen every kind of technological upgrade the industry could throw at them. RFID tags, GPS trackers, temperature sensors for pharmaceutical shipments—none of them had ever made his radio sound like it was receiving transmissions from Mars.

The static grew louder.

At 7:42 AM, security guard Janet Williams was making her routine patrol of Sector C when she noticed something that made her stop dead in her tracks. Container 4471-B, which had arrived on the Meridian Star three days earlier, was humming. Not the normal settling sounds that large metal containers sometimes made as they adjusted to temperature changes, but an actual electrical hum, like a massive computer server running at full capacity.

Janet had been working security at Liberty Harbor for eight years, ever since her husband died in Iraq and she needed a job with decent benefits for her two kids. She’d seen plenty of weird stuff in that time—smugglers trying to hide everything from drugs to exotic animals, containers that leaked mysterious fluids, even one memorable incident involving a shipment of 2decorative swords that turned out to be military-grade weapons bound for a militia group in Montana.

But she’d never seen a container that glowed.

The light was faint, barely visible in the early morning darkness, seeping through the microscopic gaps where the container doors met their frame.

Blue-white, like the LED strips her teenage son had installed in his bedroom, but somehow more intense. More alive.

Janet keyed her radio. Control, this is Williams in Sector C. I’ve got a situation with Container 4471-B. Requesting backup and maybe someone from hazmat.

The response came back immediately, but it wasn’t the voice of Danny Morrison, the usual morning dispatcher. This voice was different—younger, more nervous.

Williams, this is... uh... this is temporary dispatch. Morrison called in sick. What’s the nature of your situation?

Something about the response bothered Janet, though she couldn’t put her finger on what. Danny Morrison hadn’t called in sick once in the three years she’d known him. The man showed up to work with pneumonia, for Christ’s sake.

I’ve got a container that’s exhibiting unusual electrical activity, she reported, keeping her voice professional despite the growing knot in her stomach. Possible hazardous materials situation.

Copy that, Williams. Maintain your distance and wait for backup.

But backup never came.

At 7:43 AM, Jake Morrison was three miles away, sitting in his government-issued sedan outside a Starbucks in Lower Manhattan, trying to make sense of the fragmented images that had been flooding his mind for the past week.

The doctors at Walter Reed had told him the headaches were normal, part of the recovery process from his accident in Afghanistan. They’d been less forthcoming about the drawings.

Jake pulled out his notebook—a battered composition book he’d bought at a bodega near his temporary apartment—and flipped to the latest sketch.

His hand had moved across the page without conscious direction, creating an image that made no logical sense but felt absolutely true: a shipping container split open like a metal flower, its contents spilling light into a gray morning sky.

In the drawing, tiny figures ran in all directions, their mouths open in silent screams.

Jake had been an FBI agent for twelve years before his deployment to Afghanistan as part of a joint task force investigating terrorist financing networks. He’d always prided himself on his analytical mind, his ability to see patterns where others saw chaos. But these drawings weren’t analysis—

they were something else entirely. Something that felt less like memory and more like prophecy.

His phone buzzed with an incoming text from an unknown number:

Liberty Harbor. Now.

Jake stared at the message, his blood turning to ice water in his veins. He’d received similar texts three times in the past week, each one leading him to prevent what would have been catastrophic events. A gas leak in a Midtown office building. A structural failure in a subway tunnel. A planned shooting at a community center in Brooklyn.

Each time, he’d arrived just in time to make a difference. Each time, he’d had no memory of how he’d known to be there.

Jake gunned the engine and pulled into traffic, his mind racing faster than his car. Liberty Harbor Terminal was a fifteen-minute drive in normal traffic, but something told him he didn’t have fifteen minutes.

He had maybe two.

The explosion, when it came, could be heard from Staten Island to the Bronx. Container 4471-B didn’t just detonate—it seemed to tear a hole in reality itself, sending a shockwave that shattered windows for six blocks in every direction and registered as a 3.2 earthquake on seismographs as far away as Philadelphia.

But the blast was only the beginning.

As the smoke and debris settled over Liberty Harbor Terminal, as first responders raced toward the scene and news helicopters circled overhead like mechanical vultures, something else was happening. In hospitals across the city, in government buildings and corporate offices, in apartments and subway cars, people were beginning to scream.

Not from fear or pain, but from the sudden, overwhelming flood of images pouring into their minds. Images of future attacks, future disasters, future deaths that hadn’t happened yet but felt as real as their own memories.

The age of the Silent Scream had begun.

And somewhere in the chaos, Jake Morrison was about to discover that his fractured mind might be the only thing standing between New York City and complete annihilation.

Agent Jake Morrison’s Fractured Reality Jake’s hands trembled as he gripped the steering wheel, weaving through traffic that seemed to move in slow motion while his mind raced at light speed. The explosion at Liberty Harbor had sent a mushroom cloud of black smoke billowing into the morning sky, visible even from his position on the FDR Drive. But what terrified him wasn’t the destruction he could see—it was the destruction he’d already witnessed in his mind three days ago.

The sketch in his notebook had been exact. Down to the angle of the twisted metal, the pattern of debris scattered across the dock, even the way the morning fog would mix with the smoke to create an otherworldly haze.

Jake had drawn it all while sitting in his therapist’s office, his hand moving across the paper as Dr. Sarah Chen asked him about his adjustment issues

following his return from Afghanistan.

Adjustment issues.  That’s what they called it when a decorated FBI agent came back from a classified mission with no memory of the previous six months and a head full of images that hadn’t happened yet.

Jake’s phone rang, jolting him back to the present. The caller ID showed a number he didn’t recognize, but somehow knew he had to answer.

Morrison.

Jake, thank God. The voice belonged to Deputy Director Helen Price, his former supervisor at the Bureau’s Counterterrorism Division. Where are you right now?

About two minutes out from Liberty Harbor. Helen, I need to tell you something—

No, you need to listen to me very carefully. Her voice carried an edge Jake had never heard before, not even during the worst crisis situations they’d handled together. Do not—and I cannot stress this enough—do not identify yourself as federal law enforcement when you arrive on scene. Do not contact local PD, do not coordinate with first responders, and for the love of God, do not let anyone know you were expecting this.

Jake felt his world tilt sideways. Expecting this? Helen, what the hell are you talking about?

The drawings, Jake. The sketches you’ve been making. We know about them.

The sedan swerved slightly as Jake’s concentration shattered. How could you possibly—

Because you’re not the only one. Helen’s words hit him like a physical blow. There are others, Jake. People who came back from various operations with the same... condition. The same ability to see things before they happen. And right now, every intelligence agency in the Western world wants to get their hands on you.

Jake pulled over to the shoulder, his mind reeling. Through his windshield, he could see the emergency vehicles racing toward the harbor, their sirens creating a symphony of urban chaos. But all he could hear was the sound of his own breathing, ragged and desperate.

The mission in Afghanistan, he said slowly. What really happened to me over there?

That’s classified above both our pay grades. What I can tell you is that you volunteered for an experimental program. Something called Project Cerebrus. The official records say you suffered a traumatic brain injury during a Taliban attack on your convoy. Unofficially... Helen paused, and Jake could hear her lighting a cigarette, a habit she’d supposedly quit years ago. Unofficially, you were part of a joint CIA-DARPA initiative to enhance human cognitive abilities using advanced neurotechnology.

The words hit Jake like puzzle pieces falling into place, forming a picture he didn’t want to see. They put something in my head.

A neural interface. Experimental technology designed to enhance pattern recognition and predictive analysis. The idea was to create agents who could anticipate terrorist attacks before they happened, identify threats that traditional intelligence gathering might miss.

Jake laughed, but there was no humor in it. Sounds like it worked.

"Too well, apparently. The program was shut down after... complications.

Most of the test subjects didn’t survive the procedure. Those who did were supposed to have their memories wiped and the implants deactivated."

Supposed to.

"Jake, listen to me very carefully. There are people who want to study you, people who want to use you, and people who want to eliminate you entirely.

Right now, the only thing keeping you alive is that you’re more valuable as an asset than as a corpse. But that could change very quickly."

Jake watched a news helicopter circle overhead, its camera probably broadcasting the destruction at Liberty Harbor to millions of viewers.

Somewhere in those millions were the people Helen was warning him about—government officials, corporate executives, foreign intelligence operatives, all of them wondering how a washed-up FBI agent had managed to be in exactly the right place at exactly the right time to prevent even greater catastrophe.

Because that’s what he’d done, wasn’t it? The explosion had been devastating, but his anonymous tip to the Coast Guard twenty minutes earlier had resulted in the evacuation of three nearby office buildings. His call to the FDNY about a possible gas leak had cleared two city blocks of pedestrian traffic. His text to a contact at the Port Authority had delayed the arrival of a passenger ferry by fifteen minutes.

He’d saved hundreds of lives without even realizing it.

Helen, there’s something else. The drawings... they’re not just about terrorist attacks. I’ve been seeing other things. Personal things. Private moments in people’s lives, conversations that haven’t happened yet, decisions they haven’t made.

The silence on the other end of the line stretched for so long that Jake thought the call had dropped.

That’s not supposed to be possible, Helen finally said, but her voice suggested she was trying to convince herself as much as him. The technology was designed for threat assessment, not general precognition.

Well, apparently the technology has its own ideas about what constitutes a threat. Jake pulled out his notebook and flipped to a sketch he’d made yesterday—a woman in a business suit standing on a subway platform, tears streaming down her face as she stared at the tracks. I drew this yesterday, but I saw it happen this morning on my way to get coffee. A woman at the 14th Street station, contemplating suicide. I called in a wellness check.

Jesus Christ, Jake. Do you understand what this means?

It means I’m either going insane, or I’m turning into some kind of human surveillance system.

It means you’re the most dangerous person in America right now. And the most valuable.

Jake closed his eyes, trying to process the magnitude of what Helen was telling him. When he opened them again, he was looking at his reflection in the rearview mirror—and for just a moment, he saw someone else entirely.

A man with the same face but different eyes, older and harder, wearing a uniform Jake didn’t recognize.

The image lasted only a second, but it was enough to send a chill down his spine.

Helen, I need to ask you something, and I need you to be completely honest with me. Am I still Jake Morrison? Or am I something else wearing his face?

The question hung in the air between them like a loaded gun.

I don’t know, Helen admitted. The psychological profiles from before your deployment show a completely different person. Different personality markers, different behavioral patterns, even different handwriting. It’s like Jake Morrison died in Afghanistan and someone else came back in his body.

Someone else with his memories.

Some of his memories. The technical briefings suggest that the neural interface doesn’t just add new capabilities—it fundamentally rewrites the brain’s architecture. You might have Jake Morrison’s childhood memories, his training, his professional experience, but the person integrating all that information is... different.

Jake felt a laugh building in his chest, the kind of laugh that comes right before a complete psychological breakdown. So I’m not going crazy. I’m just not human anymore.

You’re still human, Jake. You’re just... enhanced.

Enhanced. Jake tasted the word, found it bitter. Is that what we’re calling it when the government turns people into living weapons?

The program was voluntary—

Was it? Because I don’t remember volunteering for anything. I remember being briefed on a counterterrorism operation in Kandahar, and then I remember waking up in a military hospital in Germany with six months of my life missing and a head full of other people’s nightmares.

Through his windshield, Jake could see the first responders setting up a perimeter around the blast site. Soon, federal agents would arrive—FBI, ATF, Homeland Security, maybe even CIA if they suspected foreign involvement.

They’d want to interview witnesses, review security footage, analyze the explosive residue.

And eventually, someone would notice that Jake Morrison had been in the area when the attack occurred. Someone would run his name through the system and discover his unusual recent history. Someone would start asking questions that Jake wasn’t prepared to answer.

I need to disappear, he said.

"No, you need to come in. There’s a safe house in Queens, off the books.

We can protect you while we figure out what’s happening."

Protect me from who? The people who did this to me in the first place?

Jake, you’re not thinking clearly. The neural interface is still integrating with your brain chemistry. You’re experiencing cognitive dissonance, paranoid ideation—

I’m experiencing the aftermath of being turned into a government experiment without my consent. Jake’s voice was rising, and he forced himself to calm down. Getting emotional wouldn’t help anyone. Helen, I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but I can’t trust anyone right now. Not the Bureau, not the CIA, not even you.

Then trust the drawings. What do they tell you about your next move?

Jake flipped through his notebook, looking for any sketch that might provide guidance. Most of the images were fragments—faces without names, locations without context, moments of violence or tragedy that felt important but incomplete.

But on the last page, he found something different. A drawing of himself, standing in what looked like a subway tunnel, facing off against a figure whose face was obscured by shadows. In the background, dozens of people lay motionless on the ground.

The timestamp in the corner of his mind told him this scene would play out in exactly seventy-two hours.

"Helen, I need you to do something for me. Run a threat assessment on all major transportation hubs in the city. Look for anything unusual—

maintenance schedules, security changes, personnel transfers. And check for any chatter about chemical or biological weapons."

Why? What did you see?

Jake stared at the drawing, trying to extract more details from the image his subconscious had created. I think the Liberty Harbor attack was just the beginning. Someone’s planning something much worse, and they’re going to use the chaos from today as cover.

Jake, come in. Let us help you figure this out.

I can’t. Not yet. Jake started the engine, his decision made. But I’ll stay in touch. And Helen? If something happens to me, if I disappear or turn up dead, you need to know that there are others like me out there. People with the same modifications, the same abilities. Find them before someone else does.

Jake, wait—

But Jake had already hung up. He pulled back into traffic, heading away from Liberty Harbor and toward an uncertain future. In his rearview mirror, the smoke from the explosion continued to rise, a black pillar marking the spot where his old life had finally died.

Now he had to figure out how to live as whatever he’d become.

The neural interface hummed quietly in his skull, processing thousands of data points per second, building probability matrices for events that hadn’t happened yet. And somewhere in that electronic symphony, Jake Morrison—or the thing that used to be Jake Morrison—began to plan his next move.

Because in seventy-two hours, a lot of people were going to die unless he could stop it.

And stopping it might require him to become something even less human than he already was.

Sketches of the Unseen Killer

Jake found himself in a 24-hour diner in Queens at 2:47 AM, three days after the Liberty Harbor explosion. The place reeked of burnt coffee and broken dreams, the kind of establishment where night shift workers and insomniacs gathered to avoid going home to empty apartments. He’d been driving aimlessly for hours, trying to outrun the images flooding his mind, but they followed him everywhere like digital ghosts.

The sketches had started again.

His hand moved across the page without conscious direction, the pen seeming to guide itself as his neural interface processed information his conscious mind couldn’t access. The first drawing showed a man in his thirties, Middle Eastern features, wearing a janitor’s uniform. The name

Khalil Nazir appeared at the bottom of the page in handwriting that looked like his but felt foreign.

Jake stared at the sketch, trying to understand why this particular face had emerged from the chaos in his head. The man looked ordinary—the kind of person you’d pass on the street without a second glance. But something about his eyes suggested depths that went far beyond emptying trash cans and mopping floors.

The waitress, a tired-looking woman named Dolores according to her name tag, refilled his coffee cup for the fourth time. You an artist or something, honey?

Something like that, Jake muttered, not looking up from his notebook.

His hand was already moving again, creating a second image. This time it was a woman, early twenties, wearing scrubs that identified her as a hospital employee. The name Amira Hassan wrote itself beneath her portrait. Like Khalil, she appeared completely normal—just another healthcare worker pulling a late shift. But Jake’s enhanced perception picked up details that shouldn’t have been visible in a simple sketch: the slight bulge under her left armpit that suggested a concealed weapon, the way her eyes constantly scanned her surroundings, the tension in her shoulders that spoke of someone carrying a terrible burden.

Jesus, Jake whispered, the pen falling from his suddenly numb fingers.

These weren’t random faces his subconscious was generating. These were real people, and they were planning something that would make the Liberty Harbor attack look like a firecracker.

The third sketch materialized before he could stop it: a man in his fifties, wearing the uniform of a Metropolitan Transportation Authority supervisor.

David Chen appeared at the bottom, but this time Jake’s hand kept moving, adding details that made his blood run cold. The man was standing in what looked like a subway control room, his finger hovering over a series of switches. In the background, digital displays showed train schedules and passenger loads.

But it was the expression on David Chen’s face that terrified Jake the most.

It wasn’t the look of a terrorist or a fanatic. It was the expression of a man who believed he was saving the world.

Jake’s phone buzzed with a text from the same unknown number that had warned him about Liberty Harbor: They know you’re watching. Time is running out.

He looked around the diner, suddenly aware that he might not be as alone as he’d thought. The other customers—a truck driver reading a newspaper, a young couple sharing a piece of pie, an elderly man nursing a cup of tea—all seemed perfectly normal. But Jake’s enhanced perception was picking up anomalies. The truck driver’s newspaper was three days old. The young couple hadn’t touched their pie in twenty minutes. The elderly man’s tea cup was still full despite him raising it to his lips repeatedly.

They were all watching him.

Jake forced himself to remain calm, continuing to sketch as if nothing had changed. But his hand was now drawing something different—a map of the New York