Asks the Dream (Science Fiction - Novel Excerpt)

1984. New Amsterdam, a city on Variant 23, also known as Earth.

Cara and Charity are an adolescent yin and yang in every way, from the color of their hair, to their taste in fashion. But they do have one thing in common, one thing that sets them apart from all others in a world ruled by an intergalactic corporation operating a prison called Earth.

Separated at birth, their mother murdered and their father’s fate unknown, Cara and Charity struggle for control of reality even as they struggle with their own burgeoning understanding of the complex motives they were raised to serve.

The beautiful, blonde-haired Charity wants for nothing, and her life on the Rusk Estate is a privileged one. Guided and molded from infancy by Colonel John G. Rusk, Charity earns her keep in blood, operating as a Preserver in the employ of The Dremchak Corporation.

Identical to Charity in every way save her dark hair, Cara has been raised by the enigmatic Bodum, an accomplished, possibly ancient adept of The Blackened Hand, a cabal of metaphysical warriors who have resisted Dremchak down through the centuries with their knowledge of symbiotic, extra-dimensional technology.

But, even as they battle in this ages old conflict, the twins battle another terrible power: themselves. For Cara and Charity are alike in another very fundamental way—their shadows have the seemingly supernatural ability to manifest physically, an ungodly power that is sometimes beyond their teenage ability to fully control.

But when Cara and Charity discover evidence of each other's existence, they begin to grasp their true place in a conspiracy spanning space and time. What they uncover is a prehistoric legacy, a key to the secret of their incredible powers…and their interwoven destinies.
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Described by one reviewer as "Buffy the Vampire Slayer meets Philip K. Dick".