Ava Altair grew up reading fantasy and science fiction novels. She graduated from Florida Tech with a BS in Science Education – Physics and a minor in Computational Mathematics. She taught as an AP Physics teacher for five years in Florida. She now lives in Oregon, teaching horseback riding lessons and managing the stables with her mom. She enjoys hanging out and talking about science concepts and story ideas with her dad.

What it is to be human doesn't apply anymore. The surface of the Earth has been poisoned by years of abuse and now most life lives beneath the waves of the ocean. Over the last 500 years, humans have become fragmented and specialized by genetic manipulation, but two main factions exist in the Undersea. The hybrids, a race that continues to genetically modify themselves to climb the social ladder, and the humans, the unmodified organic race that makes up the lowest tier of society. 

Alex, a Delta Six hybrid, finds an unlikely companion in a human man, Jack, while on a mission to steal the Athena file. Alex withholds the file to elicit help from Jack and they set out on an adventure across the Surface. Their relationship is tenuous until a device mysteriously links them together. Now, running from Alphas, an elite group of hybrid assassins, Alex and Jack must weather the hostile surface of the planet to reach their common goal. They soon find they can't both have the thing they want most, but also can't seem to let each other go.

FLUX

Alex pushed the metal door to the lab open. Jack smiled at her from across the large room. He sat on a patient bed with a white felt tab stuck to his temple. Ellie was behind him looking at the monitors.


Alex frowned back at him and made her way over.


"I thought you would be happy to see me," Jack said.


She slapped him on the cheek, soundly but not hard. "What were you thinking? Don't these people have teams that you could have gone with? Why were you down there alone?" Alex's face flushed with anger.


He just smiled back at her. "I'm okay. See? One piece." He patted his dirty shirt. Cobwebs hung from his beard and hair. She spotted a few blood stained slashes in his shirt sleeve and a double puncture wound on his left forearm.


"And what about this?" She grabbed his left wrist and held it up. She pulled back the sleeve to have a better look at the two holes. They were a dark angry purple with red rims. "It looks like poison. What bit you?"


Chapter 37: One of Us