Acceptable Loss

Aventurine has been sent to Penacony to make a gamble the IPC cannot afford to lose.

Citrine has been sent to make sure he survives it.

Officially, she is nothing more than an IPC risk-assessment consultant. Unofficially, she is C-11-the Corporation's last contingency when everything else has already gone wrong. Her orders are simple: observe, intervene only if necessary, and retrieve Aventurine if his plan reaches the point of no return.

The problem is that Aventurine's plan was always supposed to reach that point.

While he walks into the Family's carefully guarded paradise with a smile, a broken Cornerstone, and a wager against the impossible, Citrine begins finding things that do not belong: systems running beyond their limits, connections leading somewhere they shouldn't, and cracks beneath Penacony's perfect dream.

Then the Astral Express arrives.

What begins as an IPC operation quickly becomes something much larger. The Family is hiding the truth of its paradise. Dreams are concealing deaths, identities, and memories-and Aventurine's gamble may be the key to exposing all of it.

He intends to bet everything.

She intends to make sure there is something left when the game is over.
Neither of them yet knows what Penacony will demand in return.

A/N: the Ai cover will be changed later (I will make it myself)