No Smoking in the Dark

(Author's Note: This story runs parallel to No Man's Land—either is a valid starting point for the series.)

Prospera is a city at war with nature itself. Beyond its walls, No Man's Land stretches in every direction—a sprawling wilderness of carnivorous plants, apex predators, and worse—held back only by the FireJacks, the soldiers who burn, poison, and cut the green tide back one inch at a time. It's a losing war, and everyone knows it.

Drake Ralts knows it better than most. As a lower-enlisted Jack in one of the lowest-ranked units of the perimeter, he's spent the better part of a year doing the grunt work of exterminating invasive plants while blaming everyone but himself for his sorry lot in life. But when his little brother is murdered by a gang, Drake is forced to face reality and discovers exactly how much justice a city like Prospera is willing to sell him—and at what price.

What follows is a debt that spirals into conspiracy, a conspiracy that spirals into battle, and a battle that costs Drake the redemption he tries so hard to earn. All while his decorated older brother—a genetically enhanced FireJack officer and secret revolutionary—has been playing a longer game than Drake ever imagined.

No Smoking in the Dark is the second entry in A Chronicle of Lost Causes, a morally complex science fiction series set in a world where humanity is no longer the top of the food chain—and good intentions alone are not enough to make a hero. It can be read alongside or after the first volume, with each book illuminating what the other leaves in the dark.