Mission Override
The Mission was a triumph. The discovery is a death sentence.
In 2035, the Arcadia-1 reached the red dust of the Northern Lowlands. It was meant to be
a year of discovery, but deep within the Martian Crypts, Commander Jeff Hammond and
his crew breached a silence that had lasted for millennia. They didn't find life?they found
an ancient architecture of data. The Cypher.
The 4.2-terabyte secret claimed the life of a crewmate and triggered a desperate,
unauthorized emergency override. It was a discovery that changed the crew forever, but
it's a secret the Agency wants for itself.
Now, the four survivors are trapped in a high-tech containment ward, isolated by a
government desperate to seize the Martian data. To Director Sarah Miller, the crew are
merely biological hazards?liabilities to be scrubbed. To the survivors, they are the
guardians of a truth that predates humanity.
The Agency has the power. The crew has the encryption. But Martha Lawson has a secret
of her own, hidden in plain sight. In the cold silence of the isolation ward, the mission
hasn't ended?it has just reached its most dangerous phase.