They were never supposed to wonder. In a sealed lab buried beneath layers of red tape and ambition, microbiologist Lyla Mycayster spent three years crafting evolution in fast-forward. From a single engineered microbe, she built life-real, breathing, thinking life. Not clones. Not machines. Something new. And then they took it from her. Years later, far from Earth, these synthetic descendants thrive on a forgotten planet-primitive, curious, looking up at the stars with tools in hand and questions in their minds. They don't know who made them. They don't know why they exist. But they are starting to ask. Now, as a massive colonization project unfolds across the stars, buried secrets begin to leak. Someone is watching. Someone is pulling strings. And Lyla-once just a researcher-is being dragged into a game of survival, silence, and species-defining discovery. What happens when your creation starts looking for its creator? For fans of Children of Time and Old Man's War, this is a story of evolution, identity, and the strange, fragile thing we call humanityAll Rights Reserved
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