Echoes of the Ancestral Drum oleh Katherine Porterfield

In Accra, where gleaming skyscrapers pierce the sky, a primal cry shatters the digital hum, drawing journalist Zuri into a world she'd long dismissed.  Haunted by the recent loss of her grandmother, a keeper of ancient traditions, Zuri investigates a series of inexplicable tech malfunctions, sensing a deeper, more unsettling truth than mere glitches. Her quest leads her to Kofi, a brilliant innovator who merges ancestral wisdom with cutting-edge code, a man grappling with his own past failures and the ethical implications of his technological prowess. Together, they uncover a horrifying secret: the malfunctions are not random, but the distorted cries of ancestors trapped within the digital veil, manipulated by Elias, a forgotten scientist from Ghana's colonial past. Driven by a twisted obsession with immortality, Elias seeks to rewrite reality, merging the spectral and the digital into a terrifying new order. 

Zuri and Kofi's investigation plunges them into Accra's vibrant heart, navigating bustling markets where ancient rituals thrive beneath the veneer of modernity, and sterile server rooms where Adinkra symbols manifest as corrupted code.  Guided by the city's elders and AI imbued with ancestral knowledge, they decipher cryptic messages flickering across hacked screens, a palimpsest of the past overlaid onto the present.  Zuri confronts her grief and the guilt of neglecting her grandmother's wisdom, while Kofi battles his past demons and the fear of becoming the very thing he fights against.  As Elias’s influence spreads, distorting reality and threatening to erase Accra's identity, Zuri and Kofi must embrace their intertwined destinies. Their burgeoning love, a fragile bloom amidst the encroaching chaos, becomes a beacon of hope in a city teetering on the brink of digital oblivion.  They must harness Zuri’s burgeoning ancestral power and Kofi's technological brilliance to confront Elias, not in a single battle, but in a complex dance of code and ritual, science and spirituality.  Can they rewrite the narrative, not just of their own lives, but of Accra itself, before the echoes of the past consume the future?