Surveillance network
Cameras, sensors, and digital monitoring track every student interaction. The fog blanket is not just atmosphere—it is the outward sign that The Protocol is watching, mapping movement, and deciding who matters.
Inside the Story
What is The Protocol?
Understanding the surveillance system at the heart of Bonaire—the dark academia psychological thriller where memory is a weapon and reality is controlled by an invisible force.
What is The Protocol in Bonaire?
The Protocol is the sinister surveillance system at the centre of Bonaire, Sky Scrawl's dark academia psychological thriller. Operating invisibly across a fog-bound university campus, The Protocol monitors students, manipulates their memories, and erases individuals who threaten institutional control. It is part surveillance network, part memory-editing machine—a design engineered to preserve the university's reputation at all costs.
For protagonist Neva Sen, The Protocol turns everyday life into a nightmare. Notes rewrite themselves. Friends vanish from records. Phone calls arrive from unplugged lines. What begins as a handful of glitches escalates into a conspiracy where even her own memories cannot be trusted. The Protocol represents the ultimate form of institutional gaslighting: invisible, omnipresent, and impossible to escape.
How does The Protocol work?
The Protocol operates through three interconnected mechanisms that make it the most chilling antagonist in modern dark academia fiction.
Memory manipulation
The Protocol edits digital records, rewrites physical documents, and reframes personal perception. Journals change overnight. Official statements contradict lived experience. Reality becomes unreliable.
Institutional control
When someone threatens to expose wrongdoing, The Protocol erases them—not through violence, but by removing every trace they ever existed. Records disappear, memories fade, and the university remains untarnished.
Why is The Protocol so terrifying?
Unlike supernatural threats or human antagonists, The Protocol is invisible and systematic. It does not need to chase you—it simply rewrites the world so you were never there. That makes Bonaire resonate with readers who understand institutional power, gaslighting, and the way narratives can be controlled.
The Protocol taps into current anxieties about surveillance, data manipulation, and institutional betrayal. In an age where algorithms watch our behaviour and organisations protect themselves first, The Protocol feels disturbingly plausible. It is why fans of Black Mirror and The Secret History call Bonaire the psychological thriller that understands 2025.
How does Neva Sen fight back?
Neva's resistance begins with documentation. She photographs inconsistencies, keeps offline journals, and recruits allies who can corroborate her experiences. Together, they uncover The Protocol's architecture and hunt for weaknesses. But dismantling a system that controls reality itself requires more than evidence—it demands trust, courage, and the willingness to risk being erased.
Bonaire explores how individuals push back against institutional power even when the system holds every advantage. Neva's fight is as much about reclaiming agency as it is about survival, delivering the psychological stakes that dark academia readers crave.
Frequently asked questions about The Protocol
Is The Protocol based on real surveillance systems?
While The Protocol is fictional, it draws inspiration from real surveillance technologies, institutional cover-ups, and the ways organisations control narratives. Author Ishan Sharma researched campus security systems, data manipulation, and gaslighting to create a system that feels chillingly plausible.
What makes The Protocol different from other thriller villains?
The Protocol is not a single person. It is a system that operates through bureaucracy, technology, and institutional power. You cannot plead with it or fight it in a single confrontation. That relentless, systemic pressure mirrors real-world threats readers recognise.
Is Bonaire science fiction or psychological thriller?
Bonaire is a dark academia psychological thriller with speculative elements. The Protocol uses technology that is slightly beyond what exists today, but it stays grounded in real research so the horror feels disturbingly possible.
What books are similar to Bonaire?
Readers who love The Secret History, If We Were Villains, The Silent Patient, and Black Mirror will feel right at home. Bonaire combines dark academia atmosphere with technological paranoia and psychological depth.
Experience The Protocol yourself
Bonaire is available now on Amazon Kindle, paperback, and Google Play Books. Join readers discovering why it is the dark academia psychological thriller of 2025.