The Founder's Protocol

Seven hundred threads of a single woman's consciousness have vanished without a trace across the galaxy's inner arm. Yara Ondari, one of a thousand biological duplicates launched forty-eight million years ago to circumnavigate the Milky Way, arrives at the ninth Communion expecting reunion—and finds devastation instead. Partnered with an emissary from a rival Line, she follows the trail of the disappeared into a graveyard of dead stars, where ancient installations guard a secret about the galaxy's true architects. What she uncovers will force every surviving consciousness to choose between the safety of ignorance and a transformation beyond imagining.