Earth is no longer a home; it is a memory. In the year 3184, the CS-0 Echo departs a dying world, carrying the last 144,000 souls in a cryogenic haze. Their destination is Proxima b, but the journey will take over a century-a span of time no human passenger can survive awake. Ava-Prime, a bio-synthetic caretaker crafted from the intersection of high art and ruthless data, is the ship's lone sentinel. Her peace is shattered when the Pale, a predatory race of gene-harvesters, ambush the ark to claim humanity as biological loot. Forced into a war she wasn't built for, Ava awakens John Sterling-Voss, the brilliant engineer behind the ship's experimental StarJump Drive, and a handful of hardened veterans to mount a desperate defense. To save the species, they must enact the Scatter Protocol-launching pods into the deep black to serve as hidden seeds for a future they will never see. As decades turn into a century, John and his crew age into history, leaving Ava to navigate the evolving consciousness of an AI who has become the only mother humanity has left. But as they reach the edge of their new home, they realize the Pale were only the beginning. Something far older is moving in the silence, and it has been following the Echo since it left Sol.
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