QSFer Mark Z. Harrondale has a new dystopian sci-fi tale with an MM romance subplot out: Symbiosis: Salvation.
In a society where every thought is watched, the most dangerous thing you can do is wonder.
The Web is gone, and the truth with it. In Echelon, MindLink connects every mind to SOLACE, an artificial superintelligence that believes, with absolute certainty, it is keeping humanity safe. T.A.D. dissolved the nations, the languages, the borders. It calls itself progress. But progress has always had owners.
Nineteen-year-old Riel has never been Integrated. In a world where that should be impossible, he has survived by staying invisible. Asking no questions. Seeking no answers. Trusting no one. But the visions won’t stop. Impossible memories. Glimpses of lives not his own. Knowledge he never learned and cannot explain.
When a rebellion group finds him—and with them, Elias—staying hidden is no longer an option.
Symbiosis: Salvation is book 1 of The Symbiosis Series. A character-driven dystopian sci-fi novel with slow-burn MM romance, themes of surveillance, identity, and resistance.
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Excerpt
“The grid doesn’t lie.”
Jonas’s voice echoed in my memory as I pressed my palm against the cool metal wall, reading this morning’s first extraction three levels down. Another hunt. Another Deviant being forced into Integration.
A childhood spent in these steel towers had taught me things most people never learned. The grid wasn’t just power—it was language. Every surge, every fluctuation, every vibration through the metal told a story if you knew how to read it. Most citizens relied on screens and sensors to understand their world. I’d learned to listen with my hands.
A micro-surge within the power grid: drone deployment. Fifteen milliseconds of lag in the data flow meant surveillance systems had locked onto someone. The subtle redistribution of current as enforcement vehicles powered up their containment cells.
I kept my eyes closed, mapping it all through touch alone. Someone was running below, the irregular vibration pattern of panicked footsteps against metal grating, too erratic for youth, too desperate for someone who knew better. An early morning salvager. They always hunted those first, the ones who thought darkness meant invisibility.
The familiar drip of condensation from rusted pipes overhead kept time, each splash marking another minute in my cramped habitation unit. I’d grown so accustomed to the rhythm that silence would have felt unnatural. This constant percussion was the real pulse of Echelon—not the extraction below, not the propaganda broadcasts beginning to crackle through speakers, but water finding its way through rust. Persistence through decay.
I adjusted the signal jammer, the salvaged device that masked my room from drone scans, listening to its faint whine beneath the grid’s static. Across the alley, I heard the scrape of metal against concrete. Someone digging through the refuse bins near the dumpsters. Small, quick movements transmitted through the steel framework. A child’s hands, probably. Wrong time to be out. Wrong place to make noise.
The scavenging sounds stopped abruptly.
Through the grid I felt it: articulated plates shifting, locking into battle configuration. The mechanical transformation echoed off the steel walls, loud enough that even someone without my gift would hear it coming.
The vibrations from across the alley went completely still. Not just quiet. The absolute absence of movement that came from someone frozen in terror.
The signal jammer hummed to life, its blue indicator pulsing three times. The drone’s feed would show an empty unit, just another law-abiding citizen’s dwelling in Sector K’s vertical sprawl.
Only then did I open my eyes, knowing what I’d see.
Through my patched window, layered with salvaged mylar and frosted polymer to block sensors, the drone completed its transformation. Metal plates shifted and locked into new configurations. Six articulated legs unfolded from compartments along its sides, each ending in a three-pronged claw that dug into concrete with precision.
The T.A.D. insignia flared on its hull: interconnected nodes forming a neural web within a perfect circle. Blue light pulsed through the stylized design as if the circle itself breathed with the machine. The same glow marked those who’d taken Integration, willingly or screaming. Those who’d surrendered their minds to the system.
Hydraulic struts hissed as pressure released in stages. Controlled deceleration, mass distribution shifting with each calculated movement. The battle-mode exo-drone descended the adjacent building wall toward ground level, each leg finding purchase with algorithmic certainty, moving toward the fleeing figure I’d already sensed through the grid’s fluctuations. But its scanner swept wider, catching the boy in its peripheral beam. Frozen by the dumpsters, satchel clutched to his chest.
Across the alley, the child I’d heard moments before stood visible now. Eight, maybe younger. Eyes wide with the kind of terror that came from understanding exactly what that mechanical sound meant.
Two targets. It would take them both.
Capacitor whining, I thumbed the jammer higher. Heat bled through the casing. The scanner’s beam spasmed, fracturing into jagged shards of interference. The drone’s body twitched mid-scan, recalibrating. Efficiency over greed. It locked onto the running man, larger and easier, already fleeing. The boy stayed frozen, hidden in static-obscured space the drone had abandoned.
The running man never stood a chance. Gray-haired, thin-shouldered, wearing the standard gray uniform we all wore, patched and re-patched from years of mending. The drone moved with inhuman speed, cutting off his escape with mechanical efficiency.
My jammer had saved the boy. But I was still watching a man lose the last moments of his freedom.
A pulse erupted from the drone’s undercarriage, dropping the scavenger instantly. The Cerebral Shockwave that paralyzed without rendering unconscious. His body went rigid, eyes still open, still aware. They always made sure you stayed conscious for processing. Aware of everything being done to you.
Strange emptiness filled me watching the scene. Not the gut-wrenching terror that should accompany witnessing a man’s sense of self being stripped away. The absence of fear had become its own kind of burden. When had I stopped flinching at these extractions? When had they become just another part of Sector K’s rhythm, like the morning broadcasts or the nightly power fluctuations?
A memory surfaced, unwanted but vivid.
Niels’s face. Twelve years old, eyes wide with confusion as the drones descended on our hiding spot beneath the market stalls. Seven years ago, but I could still see every detail: the dust motes floating in the air, the rust stains on his threadbare sleeve, the exact moment terror flooded his eyes.
We’d been sorting through discarded tech components, searching for anything valuable to trade. His fingers had been smeared with circuit grease, his laugh echoing in our cramped space just moments before the shadows fell.
“Hide, Riel!” His voice still rang clear in my memory.
Paralyzed not by technology but by terror, I’d frozen as the Enforcers materialized from the crowd above. They took him while I stayed hidden behind a stack of broken equipment, watching through a gap as they forced the neural collar around his head.
The helmet-like machine clicked into place at his temples. His body went rigid. Electrical pulses hijacked his nervous system.
A “merciful” alternative to direct implantation, they claimed. Better for children. But I’d seen his eyes, wide and aware, screaming silently as his body betrayed him and followed their commands.
I never saw him again.
Author Bio
Mark Z. Harrondale writes speculative fiction that explores identity, power, and human connection across imagined futures and fantasy worlds. His debut novel, Symbiosis: Salvation, examines the cost of safety in a world governed by artificial superintelligence.
Born and raised in Serbia, Mark came of age during the peak of dystopian and fantasy fiction—an influence that shaped both his imagination and his approach to storytelling. Those formative years became the foundation for The Symbiosis Series, where control, survival, and resistance collide.
At twenty-nine, he made himself a promise: to finish what he started. After years of abandoned projects, Salvation became the first story he saw through to the end, a test of will as much as craft. The manuscript took shape across six continents, shaped by a life spent observing cities, cultures, and the quiet ways people adapt to survive.
| Author Website | https://www.markzharrondale.com |
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| Author Other Social Media | https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/67688220.Mark_Z_Harrondale |