Excerpt from THE LIE by Jude Berman:
In what is night to all beings, a wise one is awake; in what is day to those beings, the wise one sees a dark night.
IN THE DARK: Jedd
“Lie! Down!”
The sharp, staccato bark of a disembodied male voice cuts the silent darkness.
I’m seated on the ground, legs stretched out in front of me, but I instantly drop back onto my elbows, then lower myself to a fully supine position. Anticipate the kicks delivered by the steel toe caps that must belong to that voice. Feel its fingers closing around my neck. Hear the hiss of its spit landing on my face.
But there is only silence. Only darkness.
I slowly rotate my neck left to right and back to center as I strain to pick up any clues that might indicate where I am. Or whose voice that was. It was sharp but also raspy. Like a hoarse drill sergeant. Vaguely familiar. I think. Or maybe not. With the throbbing in my head, it’s hard to know. My eyes are wide open, but all I see is pitch black. If it weren’t for the slight tickle of oxygenated air passing through my nostrils, I could take this to be some far-flung corner of an ill-forsaken galaxy that no human spaceship will reach for the next few million light-years.
Really, regaining consciousness in an unrecognizable, inhospitable place is not a predicament I’d recommend to anyone.
I concentrate on breathing deeply, doing what I can to dampen the rising panic in my gut. To keep my adrenals from staging a full fight-or-flight response. As far as I can tell, neither fight nor flight is an option here. I just need to chill.
Hold the panic! I tell myself. It’s not helping.
In fact, I have a reputation for being the calm, cool, and collected one. Beers tends to run hot. Darah can run scared. June likes to run fast and is known to charge off on tangents. Those three and the rest of my close circle count on me to be their levelheaded leader. I try to live up to that. But right now I feel more leveled than levelheaded.
Visually I’m getting nothing, so I shift my attention to physical clues. My body is laid out on a hard surface. Feels like rough concrete. Or biocrete. A gravelly patch hits under my lower thoracic spine. I pull in my shoulder blades, arch my back, and slide a couple inches to my right, then direct my attention farther down my body.
My legs are strapped to the ground at the ankles. I want to sit up and investigate what’s down there, but I’m afraid of triggering that voice.
Except, how could anyone have detected in this darkness that I was sitting up?
I go through the possibilities. Motion sensors could be relaying readings to a person located elsewhere. Alternatively, the voice could have been a recording set to broadcast into this space at random intervals. One such message might have been what roused me to consciousness in the first place. The one I just heard could have played coincidentally when I was moving. Or I could be sharing this space with a human being who’s only yards away, smiling as my anguish builds, waiting to rush in and knock me out again if I make a wrong movement.
That last is the most unthinkable.
Darah would call it piss-in-your-pants terrifying. June would denounce it as a violation of the Geneva Convention. Even if we’re not at war. Beers would tell me to get my effing butt out of here ASAP. I concur on all counts and then some.
I can’t just lie here and do nothing.
Then I imagine June’s voice in my ear: Watch your back, Jedd!
She’s not here to squabble about the viability of doing that in this dark hole. Besides, I’m not in the mood to squabble with anyone—not even June. I just need to figure out where I am so I can figure out how to escape from here. Simple.
So I decide to take the risk.
First though, I hold my breath and listen intently. If a human is indeed sharing this space, unless they’re absolutely motionless or are in a soundproof enclosure—or for that matter, if I’m in one—I should be able to hear them move around. Or at least cough or clear their throat at some point. I stay as quiet as I can and listen for any sign of life.
Nothing.
The absence of sound is as total as the absence of light.
So I raise myself onto my elbows. A millimeter at a time—enough motion to set off a finely calibrated sensor. Nothing happens. So I push up into a sitting position. Still nothing.
Emboldened, I fold forward and reach for my ankles so I can explore what’s keeping them immobilized. I had presumed a steel trap of some sort, but it feels more like rubber. I’m guessing graphene-enhanced bio-based rubber. Slightly more compassionate than steel, you could say. Where it meets the ground, I detect a flat sphere I assume is a smart lock.
I’m thankful for all those hours of yoga I put in with Nick and Zack in the sunroom at our farm. They knew I prefer working out on the VR flying machine so I can soar through glacial fjords while toning my muscles, but they persuaded me to try some of their poses. They took bets on whether I could touch my nose to my knees while grabbing my toes with my fingers. Of course I had to prove my long legs weren’t a handicap. As it turned out, my body is very flexible—not necessarily because I work hard to make it so, more thanks to the genetics of my connective tissue. In any case, it’s paying off big time. Even if my mind is too fuzzy to recall the technical name for a forward-bending pose.
Leaning all the way over my legs, I poke around with the lock, searching for a vulnerability, some way to pry it open. Or maybe if I slip out of my shoes—which are smart enough to auto-lace and unlace on voice command—I can slide my feet through the strap without opening the lock.
As I unlace the shoes, then try to twist and wriggle free, the effects of having been knocked out for some indeterminate time catch up with me. A wave of nausea flips my stomach, and I wonder if I’m about to pass out. Don’t they tell you to put your head between your knees to keep from fainting? My head is already there.
I can’t afford to lose consciousness again, so I re-lace the shoes, uncurl my torso, and stretch out on my back. I close my eyes and try to focus. Try to remember how I got here. Who has a reason to take me hostage? Who hates or fears me this much?
I draw a blank.
Not that I don’t have enemies. Of course I do. Anyone working in cybersecurity has enemies. Throw in being the GOAT of hackers, and that’s an army of enemies. You can take for granted that all of them have allocated resources to at least attempt—good luck with that—to keep a white hat like me in their cyber crosshairs. Even so, I’ve never worried an enemy would materialize out of the cyber world and physically beat me up or kidnap me. Or torture me. Who would do that?
An excerpt from THE LIE by Jude Berman
Text copyright © 2026 by Jude Berman
All rights reserved
THE LIE by Jude Berman
A Novel
Dan Millman’s Way of the Peaceful Warrior meets Dave Eggers’s The Circle in this exhilarating tale, which marries visionary and political fiction together into a nail-biting, high-stakes thriller.
Cybersecurity whiz Jedd finds himself held captive, strapped to the ground in a dark tunnel, without food or water. June’s campaign website has been hacked and she is viciously attacked by protesters. Darah flashes back to the terror of life under the dictatorship in the States, when her mother was deported.
Just when this group of friends thought they had defeated their enemies, they’re faced with not one but multiple immediate threats. Rumors and accusations are flying, and the future of the democratic nation of California is at stake. Can they figure out who is telling the truth and who is lying before it’s too late?
A taut combination of political, techno-thriller, and metaphysical fiction that’s scaffolded on three realities—the ancient wisdom of the Bhagavad Gita, our current post-truth world, and the near future—this sequel to The Die is a fast-paced story about friendship, courage, and how to restore and revitalize truth.
Thriller Political [ She Writes Press, On Sale: August 4, 2026, Hardcover / e-Book, ISBN: 9798896363606 / eISBN: 9798896363613 ]
Buy THE LIE: Amazon.com | Kindle | BN.com | Apple Books | Kobo | Google Play | Books-A-Million | Indie BookShops | Ripped Bodice | Walmart.com | Amazon CA | Amazon UK | Amazon DE | Amazon FR
About Jude Berman
Jude Berman grew up amid floor-to-ceiling shelves of books in many languages. In addition to a love of literature, her refugee parents instilled in her a deep appreciation for cultural diversity and social justice. Jude has a BA in art from Smith College and an EdD in cross-cultural communication from UMass Amherst. After a career in academic research, she built a freelance writing and editing business and ran two small independent presses. In her free time, she volunteers for progressive causes, paints with acrylic watercolors, gardens, meditates, and blogs. Jude lives in Berkeley, California, where she continues to work with authors and write fiction.
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