World Zero

In the post-Razlom colonies, genetic modification is as common as clothing and cybernetic implants are a legacy of war. The invaders fell six hundred years ago. No one knows why they came. Zero does. Or he will. Biologically, he's fifteen. In reality, he's five hundred. He's Pervye — unmodified, unaugmented, without the inherited traces that mark everyone else. In a world built on technology stolen from fallen enemies, that doesn't make him primitive. It makes him exactly what the invaders came to stop. There's a black ring in a box with an inscription he can't read yet. By the time he can, he'll have already lost everything he needed to use it.