Purity is a cage. Survival is messy.
In the sterile spires of Geneva, High Archon Mercer has perfected the world by killing it. History is sanitized, biology is suppressed, and humanity survives on tasteless algae paste-safe, clean, and starving.
Dr. Zara Soto, a brilliant atmospheric physicist, knows the truth: the Earth isn't just dying; it's being murdered. When Mercer deploys a "Silica Virus" to calcify the last wild forests of Tasmania, Zara defects to the Rhizome-a ragtag resistance of farmers and hackers living in the mud.
But the Rhizome cannot win a war against orbital lasers with sticks and stones. To save Earth, they must look elsewhere. Armed with a stolen blueprint and a ship held together by a living bacterial skin, Zara must pilot a desperate crew to the most hostile environment in the solar system: Venus.
Floating fifty kilometers above the acid surface, they will attempt the impossible: to plant a garden in the clouds. But Mercer is watching, and he would rather burn the solar system than let the weeds survive.
