How far would you go to bring them back? Ordinary people, Impossible mission.
When creatures from a parallel dimension begin freezing humans in place, trapping them between life and death, the world builds fences around them and moves on, but Jace can't. His fiancée was taken, and a timer beside his bed counts down the years until she's gone.
Recruited into a prototype unit, Jace discovers the brutal catch: only living tissue survives the crossing. Every weapon has to be built inside the soldier's body, implanted, cultivated, carried beneath the skin. He spends years in brutal transformation alongside grieving parents, desperate partners, and retirees with nothing left to lose, and slowly realizes the institution rebuilding him sees his body, his consent, and his love as assets to be spent.
When he finally crosses over, he'll face the creature that took Crystal with only his modified body as a weapon and, the question he can no longer avoid: What kind of man comes back from a place like that?