What happens when disability is actually a superpower?
Swa fela fyrena feond mancynnes,
atol angengea,
oft gefremede heardra hynða.
Heorot eardode, sincfage sel
sweartum nihtum.No he þone gifstol gretan moste
maþðum for Metode,
ne his myne wisse.
So Grendel wages his lonely war,
Inflicting constant cruelties on the people,
Atrocious hurt.
He took over Heorot, haunted the glittering hall after dark,
But the throne itself, the treasure seat,
He was kept from approaching;
He was the Lord’s outcast.
Beowulf, Heaney Translation
As the sole guardian of her autistic younger brother Adam, Michelle Shank decides to move him to Rexburg, ID to join a special school for neurodivergent savants, upending their lives in unexpected and terrifying ways. When they arrive at the McJames school, Michelle is tasked by her editor to investigate a local murder, which quickly leads her to two astonishing discoveries: Adam’s school is somehow connected to the sinister activities at the nearby genetic engineering research laboratory, and her brother with his classmates are much more than they seem.
Violence erupts as the murder investigation converges on the lab, revealing the existence of the grendels, genetically engineered supersoldiers, as well as the emergence of the groupmind of Homo iunctus, the collective intelligence formed by the merged talents of the autistic savants of Adam’s school.
Michelle’s fight to protect her brother collides with the grendel’s struggle for freedom and the plans of the groupmind for the next stage in human evolution, in a story of family, love, self-determination, and the destiny of humanity.
Robert Wack 