The Ninth Wake

At 5:54 a.m., a mayday rises from beneath Halifax Harbour.

The Larkspur sank twelve years ago, hundreds of kilometres offshore. Marine-occurrence investigator Tessa Calder lost her six-year-old daughter in the wreck. Now the dead ship is transmitting again-and the woman on the channel has Tessa's voice.

The call contains sounds recorded this morning. A brass key appears where no object could have entered. Tessa remembers a marriage her husband says never happened, and someone else is learning to move her left hand.

The evidence leads to Station Nine, a drowned Cold War listening post built around a machine that treats memory as a navigational signal. Every contact reveals another Halifax. Every answer takes something from the person who receives it.

With the anniversary tide approaching, Tessa must discover who is rebuilding the array, why another version of her is trying to stop it, and what makes one life entitled to continue. If she chooses wrong, the harbour will not be the only thing that wakes.

The Ninth Wake is a high-concept science-fiction thriller about parallel worlds, contested memory and the cost of calling survival a rescue. It delivers a complete Book One resolution and opens The Nullhafen Files.