Running Dark, (Paperback)

<p>A debt that can't be repaid. A universe that can't decide how to die.</p><p>A cargo pilot is eight months into a routine haul, fueled by the desperate hope of a completion bonus that will finally clear his catastrophic gambling debts. He's not running from a bank; he's running for his life. The people he owes have made the stakes clear, using his ex-wife's address as their primary reference point. For a man who has lost everything at the tables, this contract is the last hand he'll ever get to play.</p><p>But space itself is beginning to cheat.</p><p>His navigation AI has detected a terrifying anomaly: the stars are moving. In a forty-light-year region of the outer colonies, the fundamental metrics of spacetime are becoming unstable. In some sectors, space is contracting; in others, it is tearing itself apart. It's as if every terminal cosmological theory-the Big Crunch, the Big Rip, the Big Slurp-is happening simultaneously. The laws of physics are being rewritten, and the boundary is moving inward.</p><p>The inhabited systems where his family lives are already inside the zone. They are breathing in the end of the universe and they don't even know it.</p><p>Isolated in a ship that shouldn't be flying through a reality that shouldn't exist, he is the only one who sees the math. But to the company, he's just a broken addict with a "psychological fitness" flag. Now, he must calculate the ultimate transparency: how to save a family that won't speak to him from a disaster no one believes is happening, all while the debt collectors count down the minutes to Friday.</p><p>He knows the odds. He's always known the odds. This time, he's betting the entire galaxy on a hand he can't afford to lose.</p><p></p>

• Running Dark, (Paperback)
• Author: Independently Published
• ISBN: 9798258746122
• Format: Paperback
• Publication Date: 2026-04-24
• Page Count: 248