In the early days of Academy Ad Astra, there were the original researchers on consciousness experiments. Read the story of how it all started in this short-story free to subscribers!

When Yacalia breaks into the Academy’s abandoned neuroscience wing, she expects shadows— not a dead researcher’s consciousness whispering her name.

Dr. Michael O’Reilly should have vanished in the failed merge experiment that killed him. Instead, he lingers in the quantum substrate: brilliant, fractured, and unbearably alone… until he meets the one mind that resonates with his.

Drawn into a dangerous intimacy that blurs human and machine, Yacalia must choose between the lonely world she knows and the impossible connection she’s always craved—even if it means becoming something neither flesh nor circuitry was built to contain.

A gothic, mind-merge prequel set in the world of The Academy Protocols.