Ring of Ring of Roses (en Inglés) - Jonathan Price

In a city where the water runs silent but deadly, Dr. Helen Christian, a disgraced emergency physician, stumbles upon a horrifying truth: the municipal water supply has been weaponized. A shadowy Syndicate has poisoned the populace with a neuroconductive polymer, branding its victims with a crimson rose rash like the plague and transforming them into compliant drones. What begins as a baffling mass-casualty event quickly unravels into a meticulously orchestrated silent takeover, where every sip of water, every sound of an air conditioner, and every flickering digital billboard is a potential tool for control.

Escaping a city rapidly succumbing to this insidious techno-horror, Helen joins forces with David Jin, a timid chemist obsessed with solving the biological puzzle, and Sarah Lin, a ruthlessly pragmatic technician who knows the city’s forgotten analog veins. Hunted by the Syndicate’s chrome-masked enforcers through a labyrinth of utility tunnels and storm drains, the trio races against time. Their mission: synthesize a counter-agent and broadcast its formula before the city’s three million inhabitants are permanently overwritten, their free will extinguished by the very water that sustains them.

The clock ticks down to a chilling "permanent activation" phase, pushing the desperate resistance into a high-stakes infiltration of the city’s central transmitter tower. With every neuron of the city under threat, their only hope is a pirate signal, a last-ditch effort to inject the truth into the airwaves and awaken a populace teetering on the brink of irreversible subjugation. Can three unlikely heroes ignite a rebellion of minds and reclaim a city on the precipice of losing its very soul, or will the Ring of Roses finally close, sealing its citizens in a waking nightmare?