Resonant

Kaelin wasn’t born so much as built: lab-grown Resonant engineered by the Core to become a controllable weapon. Raised inside the Cradle under Dr. Vire’s cold authority, she knows obedience, pain, restraint, and survival better than freedom. When the facility collapses, Kaelin escapes with Arya, a young Resonant child, and ORIN, the sharp-tongued AI she built as her only constant. Injured, hunted, and unstable, she crash-lands on Ashkaru, a ruined mining world where every breath, step, and surge of resonance costs her.

Rescued by Thane Arrow and the crew of the Drifting Truth, Kaelin enters a life she doesn’t know how to trust. Thane offers steadiness without force, Nix treats machinery and people with the same fierce practicality, Rhett hides guilt and fear behind humor, and Arya becomes Kaelin’s anchor in a world that keeps trying to claim them both. But the Core has not given up its prototype. As Kaelin’s power grows more volatile and her body begins to fail, she must decide whether she’s a weapon, a failed experiment, or a person worth saving.

Resonant is a biopunk sci-fi story about trauma, disability, found family, bodily autonomy, and the brutal cost of survival in a world designed to make you obey.