Miriam is a jiv—an augmented warrior for the Maker cause—and she’s more than ready to get in the ring and fight for the latest mod. If she wins, she’ll have everything she needs to apply for the Offering. The only problem? No one survives that augment. Either she’ll be the Makers’ latest failed experiment… or she’ll become the leap toward salvation her people desperately need.

Sister Amara prays she won’t be the last of her twelve sisters to reach the awakening—after all, the salvation of their Masters depends on them. But with the interrogations growing more deadly, being last may be best... especially when you’ve been created to touch the face of God.

The Mining Master of Thebe is all alone—not counting the scavenger drones, foundry nanites, and magtread tractors buzzing across the tiny Jovian moon. When a spindly tower of rocks mysteriously appears at the pole, it’s enough to vex the Mining Master’s machine intelligence like dust trapped in a harvester joint. Reporting it could mean reassignment to the Outer Belt, but probing deeper into the mystery threatens to unlock something better left... contained.

Legacy humans like Cyrus Kowalski are used to skirting the laws the ascenders have laid down—after all, he knows the hyper-intelligent human/bot hybrids only pretend to care about their legacy pets. But when Cyrus’s adopted mother is stricken by a disease the ascenders refuse to cure, he has to risk everything to defy them… or stand by helplessly and watch her die.

The robot Caretaker of Seattle Farm 0722 knows its work is important—it nourishes life, and the resulting harvest feeds the legacy humans, the ones the Masters care for and keep in Seattle. But when humans begin to make unauthorized incursions onto the Farmland, the Caretaker soon finds it has been cultivating more than it knew… and that some things were never meant to grow.

Kamali LeClair’s dance is her prayer—and her rebellion against the human/bot hybrids who run the world. In Paris’s annual showcase for the creative Olympics, she’ll prove she’s the best of what’s left of humanity… and then refuse the ascenders’ prize of immortality. But when a young man has an offer of résistance she didn’t know was possible, she has to decide how far she’s willing to go to defy the rulers who banished her mother.

Restorative Human Medical Care Unit 7435, sentience level fifty, is happiness level five out of ten to serve and heal the human master it loves. But Unit 7435 finds there is a price to be paid for love… and for failing in its primary mission.

Elijah Brighton is the face of the Human Resistance Movement. He’s the Olympic-level painter who refused an offer of immortality from the ascenders—the human/machine hybrids who run the world—in solidarity with the legacy humans who will never get a chance to live forever.

Elijah Brighton can bring a girl back from the dead, travel outside his body, and absorb a lifetime of memories from anyone he touches in the fugue state. Everyone seems to think he’s the prophet they’re waiting for… including the girl he’s falling in love with. The truth is, the fugue is bleeding over into reality, bringing his sketches to life and haunting him with visions of a girl in metal armor. She stabs him with her blade and denounces him as any prophet worth the name—and it’s not like he disagrees.

What would you give to live forever? Seventeen-year-old Elijah Brighton wants to become an ascender—a post-Singularity human/machine hybrid—after all, they’re smarter, more enlightened, more compassionate, and above all, achingly beautiful. But Eli is a legacy human, preserved and cherished for his unaltered genetic code, just like the rainforest he paints. When a fugue state possesses him and creates great art, Eli miraculously lands a sponsor for the creative Olympics. If he could just master the fugue, he could take the gold and win the right to ascend, bringing everything he’s yearned for within reach… including his beautiful ascender patron. But once Eli arrives at the Games, he finds the ascenders are playing games of their own. Everything he knows about the ascenders and the legacies they keep starts to unravel… until he’s running for his life and wondering who he truly is.