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.