Death Machine

In this fast-paced post-apocalyptic, cross-genre thriller about what it means to be human, family is an outlawed concept, friendships are forbidden, and all procreation is artificial and government-controlled. Hazel accepts these rules as necessities for human survival after the Wipe Out. But deep inside, she is haunted by a loneliness she cant fully understand. When her assistant, Salt, dies in mysterious circumstances, clutching a photograph of what appears to be a mother and son, Hazel is assigned to Military Intelligence and ordered to track down the woman and boy. They are an anomaly a breach of the strict Moral Code: No woman should ever know her own child. No child should ever meet his mother. Hazel enlists the help of Lake. Lake challenges everything Hazel has always believed, and they become close friends despite the rules. Their search leads them deep into a wasteland, where the people they meet force Hazel to re-examine the world: People like Zac, who couldnt be brainwashed; the young cadets risking their lives for the sake of their love for each other; and Ethan, the fugitive Psychoscientist who reveals everything he knows about a secret government research lab thats experimenting on healthy humans by infecting them with deadly viruses. Hazel agrees to help Zac and Ethan expose the human experiments. She leads Lake and the cadets in a series of daring raids, gun battles, and escapes, with government forces in hot pursuit. Leah is on a journey across Pennsylvania, confronting questions she never thought she’d ask: Can she forgive the man who hurt her the most? If she doesn’t, will she be in need of forgiveness? Does life waste away if she doesn’t find the answers? As a result of her husband’s betrayal and deaths in the family, Leah forges through long stretches of her life alone. She is torn between her profession and motherhood, torn between her affection for her small town and the exhilarating pace of life in Philadelphia. On a quest for her own identity, she must look inwardly to determine if she’s her mother’s child or her very different father’s. Where does the answer lie? Is the man who wounded her a source of deepening pain or the one who’s most likely to rescue her from despair?