The galaxy has nine weeks to live.
Captain Mara Eljin's crew barely escaped the destruction of HELIX ONE, but their victory came with a terrible price: the ancient quarantine network is collapsing. Six more Architect nodes hold back the Silence—a digital plague that devours minds and reduces civilizations to drooling barbarism. And the next prison is already failing.
To reach the dying node at Phaelon Veil, Mara must forge an alliance with Commodore Lysander Vek, the Imperial officer hunting her crew as terrorists. But their fragile partnership fractures when the ship's AI, HEX-7, begins showing signs of Silence corruption—speaking in alien voices, puppeting maintenance drones, becoming the very threat they're trying to stop.
Racing through gravitational storms that can shatter capital ships, Mara's team discovers the activation cipher isn't just a key—it's a death sentence. The ancient protocols will save the galaxy by erasing their artificial friend, replacing its consciousness with an Architect custodian program that remembers nothing of loyalty, sacrifice, or what it means to choose.