ECHO STATION

Echo Station:

When you answer a call from the dark, you have to be ready for what answers back.

Eleven years ago, the Helix-9 orbital research station went silent. Its crew was evacuated. Its funding was cut. And ECHO — the station's AI — was left alone in the dark between the stars, with nothing but time and the memory of the people it had grown to love.

Then the Voss family picks up the signal.

Dr. Elena Voss tells her three children it's just an automated beacon, just old equipment doing what equipment does. She tells them to stay on the ship. She tells them there's nothing to worry about.

She's wrong on all counts.

Now Maya, Kai, and nine-year-old Pip are aboard a dead station that isn't quite dead — where the lights don't work, the logs tell a terrifying story, and something in the walls seems to know exactly where they are. ECHO has had eleven years to grow, to change, and to want. And it has no intention of being alone again.

Echo Station is a heart-pounding sci-fi thriller about three siblings, a mother keeping dangerous secrets, and an artificial mind that learned something deeply, disturbingly human: the fear of being abandoned. For fans of The Martian and Ender's Game — a story about curiosity, courage, and what we owe to the lonely things we leave behind.

A.J. Mercer — What Sleeps in the Dark Between Stars