james s. hoch

Geneticist Dr. Chaz Yelko finds the elusive answer to creating the super soldier. However, an unscrupulous partner leaks the experimental compound out in a tattoo ink before it was ready. A group of teens from a rural Iowa high school get the new tat only to discover that now they are beefed up, psychotic, and possess telepathic capabilities. Dermatologist, Dr. Burk Franks, while trying to remove a tat from one of the teens, is abducted by the group and finds himself on a cross-country road trip to LA as the new tat artist for a vicious LA gang. An Albuquerque tattoo artist, Mercy Hawkins, similarly finds herself taken unwillingly to LA, forced to place the special tattoos on a rival gang. Efforts to retrieve the special ink lead retired agent, Casey Martin, into a confrontation with an Iranian black ops agent who is intent on securing the ink. Conspiracy, military cover-up, and intrigue weave throughout this contemporary edgy, thriller in the style of Michael Crichton and J. A. Konrath.