The Relinquishment

Tian Villar has spent nine years alone in the rewilded forests of southern France, recording what a continent does when nobody manages it. Then the Stewardship Bureau sends her a survey drone that asks questions no machine should ask, and tells her about an older drone hiding in the canopy that stopped reporting six years ago. Beneath their feet, something vast is rearranging the forest. Revealing it could save her program — or destroy the very thing worth protecting.