This volume collects two novels (Kieran; Eland and Jeanne) and a shorter work (Maia and Rylan) into one set.
Kieran
Kieran is meant to be the ultimate level-three Shareem, unthinking and driven, without much emotion and personal thought. When he’s sent to scope out the transports that might take Shareem away from their restricted life for good, he stumbles across Felice, who is fleeing from a life of slavery to Bor Narga.
Felice stirs the level three in him, but Kieran responds to her as a man as well, finding in her a woman who understands him better than he understands himself. Kieran jeopardizes the safety and freedom of all Shareem by pausing to help Felice, but he also jeopardizes his heart, which was supposed to have been stripped of all deeper emotion.
Maia and Rylan
Maia is the only female Shareem ever created. Sequestered by the researchers at DNAmo, her lonely existence is made bearable only by Rylan, a level-two Shareem, who has found ways to meet her in secret. DNAmo, a genetic engineering company who makes the forbidden Shareem, is about to be shut down. Rylan promises Maia they’ll flee to the secluded canyons on the other side of the world and be together—always.
But on the chaotic day when DNAmo is forced to close, Rylan enters Maia’s room to find it empty, Maia gone. For the next twenty years, Rylan searches for her, barely clinging to hope. When finally, finally, it seems he’s found her at last, there’s a danger Maia won’t even remember him, and the bond between them will no longer exist.
Eland and Jeanne
Jeanne Narren is awakened one night by a pounding on her door—a huge, gorgeous man called Eland falls onto her, begging for water. She does not know he is Shareem, a level three, fleeing the closure of DNAmo, and hunted through the streets. Eland is grateful for the help, but knows he can’t endanger Jeanne by staying. But Jeanne has treated him like a human being, not a lab experiment, and he can’t quite forget her.
