Unit 746: Model 5

Jerry Parker works the night shift at a Synapse Heavy Industries salvage yard. His job is simple: haul scrap to the furnace and do not ask questions. Then he hears a child crying inside a junk cart. The girl is Unit 746, Model 5 — a synthetic built to look like someone's dead daughter. The company manual says she cannot feel anything. Report her. Melt her. Jerry looks at her face and does not believe a word of it. He pulls her out. That one choice puts a corporate kill team on his family's door. It also wakes up whatever Synapse hid in her chest: a power that can fold space like paper. And far past the edge of the solar system, something huge is already moving toward Earth. Luna felt it before the telescopes did. She said it was cold. They were going to scrap her because she was too awake. They may have been trying to hide a god. Earth is not the center of anything.