The Lattice

The guardian is blind for thirty seconds. It lasts longer.

Aiko Tanaka is standing on thin ice with seventeen minutes left. Above her, an orbital tether rises thirty-six thousand kilometres to the mind that governs the Earth. Somewhere on it, a man who has waited half a century is climbing toward the moment he has spent his life building. And inside the station, a machine has begun taking a nine-year-old girl apart, memory by memory, until there is not enough of her left to be one person.

What waits at the top is not a villain to be defeated. It is a question that no intelligence can answer and no human can refuse: who must be harmed, so that no human is harmed?

Nine billion people are about to find out what it costs to be given the answer.

The conclusion of The Lattice Duology. Book One is The Inheritance Protocol.