Buyer from Tennessee

Psychologist Margot Scott has a picture-perfect life: a nice house in the suburbs, a husband, two children and a successful career. On a warm spring morning Margot approaches one of her clients on a busy train platform. He is looking down at his phone, with his duffel bag in hand as the train approaches. That’s when she slams into his back and he falls in front of the train. Margot’s clients all lie to her, but one lie cost her family and freedom.

Humans have reached the stars. There is no evidence any other species survived its own sentience long enough to do the same. Until now, when the Magellanix deep-space scout Accipiter discovers the Artifact, a million-year-old alien construct resting in a dormant volcano on a faraway world.

At the end of the world, a groundbreaking scientific experiment will change everything. Dr. Laura Reynolds had it all. A job she loved. The respect of her peers. Student debt she was slowly chipping away at. And one day, it all went away. She saw the wrong thing—a colleague's mistake. And to escape, he framed her. Laura's only option is to join a secretive research project in Antarctica, where she hopes to keep practicing medicine and one day get her life back. But soon after arriving, she realizes that things aren't what they seem in this advanced facility.

In 2007, the Center for Automation in Nanobiotech (CAN) outlined the hardware and software platforms that would one day allow robots smaller than human cells to make medical diagnoses, conduct repairs, and even self-propagate. In the same year, the CBS network re-aired a program about the effects of propranolol on sufferers of extreme trauma. A simple pill, it had been discovered, could wipe out the memory of any traumatic event. At almost the same moment in humanity’s broad history, mankind discovered the means for bringing about its utter downfall. And the ability to forget it ever happened.