The Patient Wren had surveyed for eleven turns when it found the world every settler in the Reach dreams of.

Dessa Oru, the youngest reader on the team, kept the scans open on her wrist long after she should have closed them. Seventy percent water. Moving plates. A star that had not flickered in four billion years.

“Perfect,” said Reckoner Varga, leaning over Dessa’s shoulder. “Water, warmth, a good heavy moon to keep the seasons steady. If you sat down to design a world for living things, you’d draw this one.”

Sublevel Four

Dr. Elias Verhoeven had not seen the sun in eleven days, and he had stopped noticing. Down on Sublevel Four of the Halcyon Institute, the only light that mattered was the pale blue glow of the incubation chamber and the thin green line of a heartbeat on the monitor.

Eight years. Two hundred and six trials. He kept every name in his head. Marcus, whose heart simply stopped. Ines, whose muscles tore themselves from the bone. Some volunteers had come for the money. Others had come for the promise: a human being with no ceiling. Strength, speed, intellect, perception, every one at its maximum, all at once.