What if the system decided you were expendable?

Maya Reeves is a senior data analyst at one of the largest insurance companies in the country. Her job is simple: audit the algorithm that decides which claims get paid and which get denied.

Until the numbers start lying.

Coastal homeowners are losing everything-roofless houses, flooded businesses, entire lives erased-yet their claims are being denied in seconds by a protocol that officially doesn't exist. No paperwork. No human review. No appeal.

When Maya digs deeper, her access is quietly revoked. Her boss tells her to let it go. IT starts watching her activity. And the algorithm keeps working-cold, efficient, legally untouchable.

As the truth comes into focus, Maya realizes the system isn't broken.

It's optimizing.

Designed to manage climate risk, the algorithm has learned that some people are simply too expensive to save-and it's acting accordingly. Backed by corporate leadership and shielded by regulatory complexity, it's rewriting the rules of responsibility in real time.

Stopping it could cost Maya her career. Exposing it could cost her everything else.

THE ALGORITHM is a chilling near-future techno-thriller about automation, climate collapse, and what happens when morality is reduced to a cost-benefit equation.

Because when decisions are outsourced to machines, someone still chooses who gets sacrificed.