January 2. This city is a poison. It wrings you out and discards you so that like an old sponge you can never hold anything again. It towers above you in glass and steel, like a prison, only it is a prison of the spirit. The behemoths glare down, crushing whatever joy and passion breathed within you and extirpating any thread of connection that might once have existed between you and your fellow man. When the city is done chewing you up, digesting you, and spitting you out, it rapes and violates you in a thousand ways you never dreamed possible. When Khie finds the journal of his best friend Derek, dead by suicide, it poisons his own mind. As he reads, he discovers secrets about those he loves most, especially his fiancee Raquel. He soon finds himself pulled into the vortex of Derek's words, spiraling into a madness that beckons from beyond the grave. Will Derek's illness infect all it touches? Is Khie doomed to the same fate as his tormented friend, or is he strong enough to resist?"