In 1307, King Philip IV of France moved with a deadly purpose. On Friday, October 13, a date that would echo through history, his agents swept across France, arresting hundreds of Knights Templar.

Wayward does not mention MK-Ultra. It does not mention Satanic Ritual Abuse (SRA) or Ritualistic Sexual Abuse (RSA). It does not mention the CIA, or Operation Paperclip, or the recruitment of war criminals. But its narrative structure is a near-perfect map of the stages of trauma-based mind control that survivors, whistleblowers, and investigative journalists have been documenting for decades.

There is a place in the Alaskan wilderness where the trees stop and the towers begin. One hundred eighty steel masts, each seventy-two feet tall, rise from the boreal forest like the ruins of some alien cathedral—a geometric scar on a landscape otherwise defined by the chaotic sprawl of nature.