Life made you get your hands dirty; life was vengeful if you tried an easy route.

After the virus decimates 99.9% of the world’s population and all traces of humanity along with it, Rhiannon and Will are forced to move beyond their past fame, fortune, and personal demons to rescue a mute girl from the clutches of two warring cults.

This stand-alone novel is a post-apocalyptic love story from award-winning writer Meghan Ciana Doidge (Adept Universe/Conduit World).

Content note: graphic violence and traumatic events/situations implicit to the post-apocalyptic setting. More specific content of note listed in the front of the book. Adult 18+

An ordinary summer's day.
The grass is green, the flowers are blooming. All is right with the world. Then the dead start rising. From cemetery and mortuary, funeral home and morgue, they flood into the streets until every town and city is infested with walking corpses, blank-eyed eating machines that exist to take down the living.
The world is a graveyard.
And when you have a family to protect, it's more than survival.
It's war.

Abandoned houses. Burned out businesses. Towns overrun. Dead bodies left to rot where they fell. Hordes of the infected roaming the land, killing anyone they find. Survivors huddled behind walls, trying to scratch out an existence in a world turned upside down.

This is the world Joshua Andrews grew up in. This is the only world he has ever known. After the Tripp virus wiped out the rest of the country, the state of Illinois is the only part of the country left with any survivors.

Walled in to preserve the remnants of the country, Josh and his friend Trey deal with growing up in a world that will literally tear them apart if they make a mistake. But that's the price they have to pay for being born in the apocalypse.

As Harry and the other residents of Orchard Close struggle to survive, a new crop of problems present themselves. Unstable electricity damages equipment, days are spent scavenging for ammo, weapons, food, glass bottles, and of all things, yarn. Elsewhere, gangs carve out their territory throughout the city. Residents pay for protection through coupons, barter or worse. Citizens fleeing the city gangs, violence and lack of food flock to Orchard Close, but how many can they take in? Worse, as time goes by, life changes from surviving to enduring. What's the point of maths if you are going to starve to death? The peace is fragile with only a bullet away from having the whole world change again...and it does.

War is in their DNA. Marci, ex-commander turned rebel, aims to destroy the Astral's hybrid genesis program which captures her people and builds them into soldiers for their armies. Astrals, those of High-born blood, not mutated from the toxins and radiation, rule from their protected cities with savage weaponry and the ranks of redesigned Tellurians.

Commander Marci:

I escaped the experiments of Project Zedger, which alters us for the Astrals’ bioenhanced military, Occupational Cybernetic Corps. OCC protects Zion from other Astral countries, but it also maintains order within its boundaries. Us soldiers are mutated, spliced with animals, or cybernetically restructured to do the most damage without objection. I was one once, Bravo class, a cybernetic hybrid, a commander.

I hated that my kind died because of my orders, Genesis's orders. It's why I broke free.

Genesis Hub controls everyone. It consumes your thoughts and controls your actions through a splay that squeezes the back of your brain. It makes us kill our own kind. Tellurians dwindle in numbers with every passing day. Project Zedger must burn. Genesis must fall. Only I have the skills and potential to make that happen. The others who have different minds like mine are all still in service.

Levi, my recently rescued Crisper, is in desperate need of a regulator to control the massive amounts of Cerithymite nanotech the doctors pumped into him. He was dumped not far from where I live with a piece of my old splay in his head. It's a message from my designer. My hideout has been discovered by OCC Snipes. My time is up. Ingrid is on to me.

I have a plan that just might save Levi and free us all, but I risk Ingrid gaining control of me and another mobile army. I've already taken more lives than I've saved. I won't help her take over the world.

Levi:

My memory is a mess of fragments from my time in service. All I know is Commander Marci saved my life, and I can't get too far away from her. Something about her calms the storm in my blood. When she leaves, I am inundated with pain, like a million stinging ants clawing their way out of my skin. I hope she can figure out what I am. I hope she can fix me. If I live, I swear, I will protect her with my life.

Sergeant Mason Cage:

I've monitored Marci for years under the orders of a rebel Astral. I don't think Marci remembers me. Zedger screws with your head, stirs up your concept of identity with too many synthetic thoughts. You start to wonder what's real. It's why us Disconnects and rebels have to stick together. I wish I could talk to Marci, tell her everything, tell her I'm sorry for getting us both into this. I don't want to go back in to get her out, but I fear I might have to. Astrals love to torture us. They mutated me to like pain, to crave it in battle. I'll do what I have to, to protect her. I owe her that much, at least.

*This series features cursing, violence, and torture.

"Simply astonishing read! Brilliantly conceived..."
- BookBub Review, ?????

"I loved everything about this fast-paced adventure. Strife weaves a compelling cast of cybernetic characters into a fascinating but terrible post apocalyptic world where an elite few will do anything to turn the rest of humanity into their superhuman slaves."
- Goodreads Review, ?????

"Zedger is simultaneously thrilling and thoughtful, perfectly balancing high-octane action with speculative allegory, which fans of cyberpunk will love."
- Goodreads Review, ?????

Hybrid Genesis Series

1. Reclamation: Mind Jack (Novella)
2. Zedger: Edge of Zion
3. Oblivion: Fractured Empire
4. Genetic Dust (Side Story)
5. Renascent: Starborn Blood (Novella)

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*Severed Press; Second edition (October 9, 2014)