great idea, but fell short of expectations

How to you fight a murderer who gets his victims to cause their own deaths? I was drawn in by the idea of this story... Planting a trigger in a person's mind without them knowing and having it released by a few simple lines of text. What a great start. I was sad to see the story get muddled up with side plots that went nowhere. While there were some really positive plot points with the empaths, their abilities and their oppression by the Elite, the rest of the story fell a bit flat for me. 3 stars for the writing.