The Translator of Alien Code (Paperback)

Dr. Mara Ellison built predictive systems to save lives-until her research was seized by a black-budget program and grafted onto something not of this world. Buried in a desert facility pods of living programmable matter wait in the dark-able to rewrite biology bend physics and slip through reality like it has seams. When the pods wake Mara and a handful of strangers-an idealistic analyst a burned-out nurse a haunted operative and a hacker who never learned when to shut up-find themselves sharing their minds with the last echoes of an alien civilization that already destroyed one world. General Keating calls them assets. The pods call them hosts. They just want their lives back. What starts as controlled enhancement quickly becomes a fight for consent identity and the right to stay human while something unimaginably powerful is learning how to care about them-and how dangerous their species can be. As governments tighten their grip and rumors spread of other pods that aren t asking permission at all Mara s found family faces an impossible choice: Hide and survive quietly...or step into the light and risk everything to build something better than the systems that broke them. Perfect for readers who love: Character-driven sci-fi with real emotional stakes Found family under pressure Alien contact and AI stories where consent ethics and trauma actually matter If you ve ever wondered what you d do when the most powerful thing in the world moves into your head-and refuses to leave-this is the story that asks what you might build with it.