At the end of the Dome War, all four of Ethan Carter’s brothers are ambushed and killed. Ethan wins the battle—but a poisoned needle stamped with a military serial number triggers on his brothers’ bodies, ravaging his mind with neurotoxin and forcing him to feign insanity. At the funeral, the Kane family cancels his engagement to Olivia, and rival powers swarm the Carter vacuum. When Sofia and three other women publicly stand beside him, and his father is humiliated into coughing blood, Ethan’s memory snaps back—but to uncover why his brothers truly died, he keeps playing the fool. As “Joker,” he hunts the darknet bounty, uses the Phoenix Plan to turn the military, arms suppliers, and conglomerates against each other, and follows the “Route Four” clue to the Black Key and eighty-one Black Shield operatives. He defeats “Lone Wolf,” forces out the true mastermind Theodore Hale, and saves Sofia and Olivia from an explosion. The Carter family rises again—and the man who played dumb no longer has to act.
