Search Worlds Without End

*36:00:00*

The clock activates so suddenly in my mind, my head involuntarily jerks a bit to the side. The fog vanishes, dissipated in an instant as though it never was. Memories come slotting into place, their edges sharp enough to leave furrows, and suddenly I know. I know exactly who I am.

My name is Lia Johansen, and I was named for a prisoner of war. She lived in the Tiersten Internment Colony for two years, and when they negotiated the return of the prisoners, I was given her memories and sent back in her place.

And I am a genetically engineered human bomb.

Lia Johansen was created for only one purpose: to slip onto the strategically placed New Sol Space Station and explode. But her mission goes to hell when her clock malfunctions, freezing her countdown with just two minutes to go. With no Plan B, no memories of her past, and no identity besides a name stolen from a dead POW, Lia has no idea what to do next. Her life gets even more complicated when she meets Michael Sorenson, the real Lia's childhood best friend.

Drawn to Michael and his family against her better judgment, Lia starts learning what it means to live and love, and to be human. It is only when her countdown clock begins sporadically losing time that she realizes even duds can still blow up. If she wants any chance at a future, she must find a way to unlock the secrets of her past and stop her clock. But as Lia digs into her origins, she begins to suspect there's far more to her mission and to this war, than meets the eye. With the fate of not just a space station but an entire empire hanging in the balance, Lia races to find the truth before her time -- literally -- runs out.

An enemy you can't kill. A soldier who can't fight. An interstellar war that can't be won... until now.

As a soldier of the Celestial Expanse, Guardian First Class Michael Sorenson knows better than anyone that when the Spectres invade, there are only two options. Run or die. However, his defensive war takes on a whole new spin when he's recruited into Division 7, a Research & Development facility with the ultimate mission: to create a large-scale weapon that can kill Spectres en masse.

Here Michael joins a team of military elite who have the daring -- and dangerous -- task of taking new weapons prototypes out into the field for testing on enemy troops. Yet the closer they come to developing a working WMD, the more it becomes clear: There's a saboteur in R&D.

With all signs pointing to a massive Spectre attack brewing on the horizon, the creation of a new weapons system yields an opportunity to end the threat once and for all. As the days count down toward its launch, Michael must hunt down the saboteur... before the saboteur hunts down him.

On a forgotten planet in the midst of an interstellar war, a resistance leader will rise.

Teal Sorenson has lost everything in the two years since the alien Spectres descended upon the Celestial Expanse: family, friends, even her home. Now condemned to exile on the jungle planet Iolanthe, she can only watch the war from afar... until a chance invasion sends her fleeing into the night.

With the colony overrun, the only place left to go is the jungle, and yet as Teal struggles to survive in a savage alien rainforest that could as easily kill her as save her, she realizes this invasion is more than just a simple offensive strike. Iolanthe has nothing to tempt the enemy: no resources, no strategic value, no military presence. So why are they really here?

The answer could spell the end of the war, and the human race along with it. Now only Teal and a ragtag band of survivors stand between the enemy and certain victory. Mere survival is no longer enough. It's time to fight.

The battle for Iolanthe has begun.