Marco stared at the blinking cursor on his translation software. He had typed the search phrase out of laziness. Now, he was no longer a translator. He was the story's new main character—and he was about to find out if he was the hero or the villain.

He hit send, unplugged his computer, and walked out into the Roman rain, a free man who had just refused to download his own destruction.

Marco leaned back in his worn-out office chair, the glow of his dual monitors the only light in his small Roman apartment. Outside, the November rain hammered against the shutters. He was a subtitle translator, a ghost in the machine of global entertainment. His current job: translating the hit Italian TV series Nero su Bianco (Black on White) from Italian to English.

Marco refreshed his memory. He'd translated the first four episodes. The show was a standard crime thriller. This script was darker. It revealed that the hero’s partner was the killer. That the beloved local priest ran a money-laundering ring. That the entire first season was a lie.