The Helix Paradox

Salvage diver Iridia Vance has spent her life clawing through dead ships and dying atmospheres, pulling scrap from the void to keep the Bramble flying. On a routine dive into a derelict, her torch illuminates something that should not exist , a helix-shaped relic fused to ancient metal, pulsing with a signal no human technology can produce. Before she can cut it free, her comm crackles with a buyer's offer that could bankrupt empires. Captain Drego Marsh takes the contract, and suddenly Iridia is no longer a diver. She is cargo. Dr. Senna Quell, a exiled geneticist with her own reasons to run, decodes the artifact's terrifying function: it rewrites biological code at the molecular level , a key to engineering life, or ending it. Hunted by corporate fleets and a shadow operative called Pell Ardent, Iridia must trust a cast of drifters and outcasts, including the rogue mechanic Yorick Hale and the enigmatic AI fragment CHIME. The deeper they flee toward the outer belts, the clearer the choice becomes. Surrender the helix to those who would weaponize it, or unleash its power themselves and risk becoming the very monster the galaxy fears.