Maya O'Neill

The relay core was never supposed to be warm. It definitely was never supposed to be waiting for her. Mira Voss has spent nine years holding a forgotten frontier station together with duct tape, stubbornness, and the same instincts that got her mother killed sixteen years ago - on a station that "failed" the exact same way hers is failing now. The Authority calls it routine decommissioning. The one man who tried to tell them the truth thirty-two years ago, and was exiled for it, calls it something else entirely.
And the courier who just walked onto Kell-9 with a fake name, a stolen handset, and a secret worth more than the entire station says they don't have the thirty days everyone thinks they have. Mira only wants one thing: to find out what her mother really discovered, before the same silence that buried her mother buries everyone she has left. She doesn't expect the answer to already know her name. Every station that has ever run this hot has ended the exact same official way - catastrophic failure, zero survivors, case closed, forever.
Mira has stopped believing the official story. But the closer she gets to whatever is really growing beneath her station's floor, the less sure she is that finding the truth and surviving it are the same thing - and the thing keeping time isn't waiting for her to decide. What is Kell-9 really becoming - and if Mira finally gets her answer, will there be anyone left to hear it with her?