Provisional - C Lowry

They watch the skies. The government watches them.

Six months after the "Announcement," mysterious ships sit motionless in the sky over the harbor, but life on the ground has become a prison. In a city strictly controlled by military checkpoints, daily curfews, and tight provision rations, cooperation with the new regime is the only way to survive.

Ray Peoples survives by studying the watchers. Armed with a notebook, he tracks the subtle, terrifying shifts in the government's official propaganda regarding the "lunar monitoring program" and the silent "visitors". But when his roommate, Declan Maguire, receives a terrifying notice threatening to draft him into the oppressive Compliance Corps, passive survival is no longer an option.

As the authorities begin systematically purging library books on historical resistance and disappearing local professors, an ex-military construction worker named Frank Calhoun uncovers a massive, highly secure data-processing facility being secretly built beneath the city. Brought together by Dec's uncle, a careful underground information broker, these ordinary citizens must make a dangerous choice: wait for the system to crush them, or voluntarily walk into the belly of the beast to fight back.

Provisional is a pulse-pounding dystopian sci-fi thriller perfect for fans of near-future government conspiracies, alien occupation mysteries, and gritty stories of underground resistance.