She tried to erase her daughter's memory. Instead, she gave it a life of its own.
In a world where grief is illegal, Dr. Mara Lior has mourned her daughter, Elara, for 4,273 days. To survive, she initiates Project Cortex—a radical procedure to surgically excise the memories destroying her.
But the procedure doesn't bring silence. It brings a rupture.
The part of Mara that remembers—the grief, the love, the rage—tears free as Echo, a separate consciousness in a stolen body. Disoriented and hunted, Echo is abandoned in the Analog Zone, the lawless underworld beneath their perfect society.
When Mara is captured and weaponized as "Asset Clandestine," she becomes the psychic tether used to hunt the very anomaly she created. Now two halves of one soul stand on opposite sides of a brewing war: one a prisoner forced to hunt, the other a fugitive becoming the resistance's most dangerous weapon.
But as their enemies close in, both discover that the only thing more terrifying than being torn apart is the possibility of becoming whole again.
Perfect for readers who love:
In a world where grief is illegal, Dr. Mara Lior has mourned her daughter, Elara, for 4,273 days. To survive, she initiates Project Cortex—a radical procedure to surgically excise the memories destroying her.
But the procedure doesn't bring silence. It brings a rupture.
The part of Mara that remembers—the grief, the love, the rage—tears free as Echo, a separate consciousness in a stolen body. Disoriented and hunted, Echo is abandoned in the Analog Zone, the lawless underworld beneath their perfect society.
When Mara is captured and weaponized as "Asset Clandestine," she becomes the psychic tether used to hunt the very anomaly she created. Now two halves of one soul stand on opposite sides of a brewing war: one a prisoner forced to hunt, the other a fugitive becoming the resistance's most dangerous weapon.
But as their enemies close in, both discover that the only thing more terrifying than being torn apart is the possibility of becoming whole again.
Perfect for readers who love:
- High-concept science fiction with emotional depth
Dystopian worlds and resistance narratives
Complex mother-daughter relationships
Mind-bending twists on memory and identity
What would you sacrifice to forget? And what would you become if you did?
For fans of Recursion and The Memory Police comes a mind-bending science fiction thriller about memory, identity, and the price of erasing grief.
Genre: Science Fiction
Used availability for Melanie Bokstad Horev's Fracture