Ben and his wife, Sarah, had a front-row seat for the apocalypse. Unfortunately, they were from different sides of the country. Separated by a ravaging virus, the couple finds themselves struggling to reunite during a time that feels like the end of days. While Ben sat in his secluded upscale riverside house, infected people ravaged the countryside. The Plan was simple. If either of them ever got separated, they would make their way home.

Ben Dailey's Viper Company has one motto: Play hard and fight even harder. The crew is comprised of some of the most elite fighters in the Fleet, though occasionally overconfident and, some might say, obnoxious. So when Dailey is handed down a mysterious, high-security mission that's ostensibly a search-and-rescue for his once-upon-a-time academy rival turned brother in arms, he's convinced there's more to the job than meets the eye. Soon, the USF Murphy is on its way to the edge of the Void to track down what happened to Capt. Rick Bearing and the Asher-5.

Here we find Max settling in with the realities of the world around him, becoming more relaxed with the Magical and Ethereal communities. The Balance has occurred, and the regular world is now aware that everything that goes bump in the night, for the most part, is real. In this short story, Max, well...Max is about to learn a valuable lesson about making bets at the bar with a stranger.

At the end of the world. Nick Peterson never expected to be stuck with a bunch of kids. A 17-year-old boy shouldn’t be responsible for keeping other people alive. But he didn’t have much choice in the matter. That’s what happens when everyone else dies.

Max was just having one of those days until he soon realized everything that goes bump in the night is real. Most people inherit a house, a pet, or money. Max Abaddon wasn’t so lucky. His gramps left him a job that required him to learn that magic was real, and he’d better learn how to use it. Soon.... In his new role Max works with a team of eccentric mages based out of a facility called the Atheneum that has for a very long time managed the relationship between the normal world and well everything else.