Awakened

Set in a near-future where technology is fully integrated in our homes, and a humanoid AI is running for London Mayor, Pels is a journalist desperate to get to the bottom of a spate of disappearances of young Black British people who are then found dead by bodies of water. But her boss is uninterested in her pursuit, instead assigning her to cover the "unreasonable" protests that locals in Benin are staging in opposition to white tourists heading to retreats to partake in their sacred Spirit Vine rituals. He thinks Pels will 'fit right in' and can show the benefits of this type of tourism. While Pels is sceptical, she has been having strange dreams in which she sees what seem like celestial beings, who tell her she has an unfulfilled destiny, and so a part of her is intrigued by the ceremonies... She'd rather be helping a friend whose brother has just gone missing back in London, but decides to take her bosses' assignment as leverage to then pursue the missing kids investigation. But when she partakes of the Spirit Vine ceremony in Benin, it unlocks a strange power within her. She learns that this has been her destiny, and that the missing children are part of a large otherworldly conspiracy that only she can stop. As she returns home to a London in turmoil as the cases of missing kids increase, before she can fulfil her destiny and help redirect the dark fate of her world-a fate controlled by people closer to her than she thinks-first she must come to understand and control her newly awakened abilities...