Wasteland Heart

In order to escape being a worker drone in a dismal dictatorship, Sasha joins a group of people seeking asylum on the continent of Galvlohi. Once a world power, deadly nanobots wiped out much of Galvlohi's population. A century later, cities have given way to wilderness, and descendants of the survivors live insulated and harmonious lives with the land, only opening their borders for refugees like Sasha. It's the perfect place to start over, to get clean, and to figure out who he is.

But his fellowship is strict about not wandering off, and it's willing to use violence to get the point across. It's far from the adventure and freedom Sasha expected to find, and worse, his new life threatens to end before it's even begun when he's afflicted with the continent's deadly nanobots. A Galvloan woman saves his life by sharing the anti-malware in her blood, but his heart is irreparably damaged.

He wants to repay the woman's kindness, and she wants someone to find her missing brother, Corvin, which seems like the perfect job for a novice adventurer. Escaping his fellowship with a debilitating heart arrhythmia might be the easy part. Because no matter how far he travels, he can't outrun his own problems, and the world is full of people who could be friend or foe and terrifying animals he was sure were extinct.

Then there's Corvin. And there's nothing easy about Corvin.