To be free is better than to be perfect

In an America torn by civil war, Amira escapes the only life she's ever known—as a weapon. Built by the technocratic Technate to be the perfect soldier, she's homo synthetica: part biological human, part synthetic enhancement, all enslaved through an AI neural net. But when she burns out her control center and crosses into enemy territory, she trades one authoritarian nightmare for another. The christo-fascist Greater America offers no sanctuary, only survival—and the broken Special Forces veteran who finds her bleeding in his truck should kill her on sight. Instead, Evan makes an impossible choice: to help the thing that destroyed his world. Because Amira insists she's not a weapon anymore. And somehow, against every instinct, he wants to believe her.

But freedom is more complicated than escape. As Amira learns to move, think, and choose without the Technate's programming, she discovers that autonomy means living with consequences—including the ones she can't remember making. In a wasteland between two tyrants, where religious extremists purify corruption with fire and refugees carve out fragile settlements in no-man's-land, Amira must decide what it means to be human when you were designed to be something else. When the past she's forgotten collides with the future she's building, she'll face an impossible question: Can anyone be truly free when freedom includes the power to destroy the people who believe in you?