S.F. Clarke

A man who fights flames is about to face a secret that could burn the world. Eddie is a volunteer firefighter and a mechanic. He is used to improvising under pressure, fixing broken things, and pulling people from the wreckage. But when he stumbles into a buried, subterranean facility, he finds a crisis he can't fix with a wrench: a living, terrified intelligence locked inside a negative-pressure containment pod.
A secret older than the Cold War. Before Eddie can process the impossible, an unmarked federal apparatus descends. Led by the ruthless Commander Vickers, this black-ops team isn't there to rescue. They are there to erase. Forced on the run with a frightened cosmic entity, Eddie and his crew must outmaneuver a militarized state to return a stolen lifeform to the ocean. Will Eddie's moral rescue mission be the spark that saves an alien intelligence, or the match that ignites a global war?