Project Chrysalis

When the System Makes You a Weapon, Can You Ever Be Free?

In a world where rebellion is punishable by death, Project Chrysalis remakes the children of dissenters into perfect assassins—stripped of identity, hardened by brutality, trained to obey without question.

Alexios Mark, the son of a pastor who died for his faith, refuses to let go of his beliefs. Even as the program seeks to break him, he holds firm—until his refusal to kill brands him a traitor. Presumed dead after a violent punishment, Alexios vanishes—leaving behind only a silver cross and the unanswered questions he sparked in Matilda Berg.

Matilda, raised to hate and trained to kill, never meant to feel anything at all. But Alexios was different. And when he's gone, nothing about Project Chrysalis makes sense anymore. Then she gets a message that shouldn't exist: her father is alive. Everything she's been told is a lie.

Forced to flee into a world she was never meant to survive, Matilda must decide who she is beyond the weapon she was built to be—and whether she’s ready to fight for the truth.

Read Project Chrysalis now and step into a chilling dystopia where faith, identity, and freedom hang by a thread.

Excerpt from the book

My father spoke against the President again. My mother always warned him about speaking of the President as a dictator and how cruel he was from the pulpit! But my father said the President was a dictator, and someone needed to speak out against him! My father was a missionary from America, but this place was not free like America was, and now we were driving away, trying to escape from the secret police who were hunting us! Driving through the forest, it was snowing hard that night. A church friend had warned us about the secret police coming after us. We packed what little we could carry, as fast as we could. Neither my mother nor father knew where to go. We had only gone a few miles before the secret police found us and were hot on our tail! I was only five at the time. I didn’t really know what was going on. I had tears rolling down my cheeks, and my mother’s eyes were wild whenever she turned her head to see how close the secret police were behind us. It was snowing so hard I could hardly see out the windshield. My father leaned closer over the steering wheel, trying to see better, when a deer jumped in front of the car. My father turned sharply and drove right into a large oak tree.

I heard sirens. I opened my eyes. I was lying on a coat. Sitting up, I looked around my surroundings. There were two people lying on either side of me. At first, I didn’t know who they were; their faces were covered in blood. But as I looked at the woman’s face—covered in blood, with her eyes open—I recognized my mother! I turned to the other person. It was my father. His eyes were open too. They were not moving! There was a lump in my throat, and my stomach was in knots. My parents were dead! I cried loudly, calling their names, telling them to wake up! My cries turned into sobs as I sat there turning from side to side, looking into their dead eyes and bloody faces. Over my sobs, I heard someone say, “Everything checks out. You are free to take the boy.” My heart jumped into my throat; my mind went wild! Who was going to take me?! Why?! I quickly went to my father’s corpse and grasped his silver cross necklace. It was cold and stained with blood. I removed it from his neck and quickly slipped it into my pocket before they saw it.

Two men in suits were walking up to me. One was a younger man with a goatee and blond hair, and the other was an older man who was clean-shaven but had salt-and-pepper hair. I was looking for a way to escape. Maybe I could run away before they could get me, but I was surrounded by medics and police officers. I would go nowhere. I wondered what they wanted me for.