The boy in the chair was dead.
It did not last.
Found in a burning lab, he remembers nothing. Not his name. Not his past. Not the secret locked inside him.
Twelve years later, the brightest star in the sky is a city—and it leaves for another sun in nine days.
David has a pass for one day aboard. That’s all the pass says.
Somebody forgot to tell the gate.
Now he is bonded to the guts of a ship he was only meant to visit: three years from a world nobody has seen, with no way home and no idea who sent him.
Every drop of water has a price. Every hour goes on the wrist. Down in the Pit, so does he.
He climbs anyway. Up top, someone is watching. That never ends well for people like him.
And the secret locked inside him is starting to wake.
A character-driven colony-ship thriller for readers of The Expanse and Silo.
Vale Vandernent grew up between languages, left one home for another, and still runs on strong coffee. Closed Loop is Vale’s first novel.