The Covenant Protocol

by J.W. Elliot

Winner of the 2022 New England Book Festival for Science Fiction Who will inherit the dying earth? Kaiden, a young security officer, flees the Clone Council in an effort to remain free and save what is left of his family. The world has been emptied of natural-born humans in a catastrophic plague planned and executed by his own mother. Billions now lie dead and moldering in silent megacities on a desiccating planet, and his mother still seeks to control him from beyond the grave.When his sisters are murdered, Kaiden must decide whether to keep running or face his own death to save what is left of humanity from the control of a genetically-modified supersoldier.To survive, he must unite with old enemies and confront what it means to be human in a world filled with clones bent on ridding the earth of the last remnants of natural-born humanity. The Ark Project series is the story of a desperate attempt to redefine what it means to be human in a world perched on the edge of destruction with the technology to engineer humans capable of living in space.When one scientist takes it upon herself to make the hard decision of who gets to live and who must die, Kaiden, a courageous security officer plagued with memories from a past he did not live and a family he never had, sets out to stop her.Failure means the end of humanity as it has always been and the emergence of a new human experience where individuality and identity may have no meaning at all. And Kaiden’s mind may be the secret to the survival of individual consciousness—of identity itself. But he won’t know unless he allows himself to die.

273 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 29, 2021

About the author

James is a twenty-nine-year-old stuck in an older man’s body. He loves to paddle his canoe, shoot his handmade longbows in the woods, make knives, study martial arts, and generally enjoys challenging himself. When not teaching or writing about the real past, he is imagining worlds and histories that might have been, should have been, or may yet be.

James has two homes (though only one house)--the mountains of Idaho and the forests of New England--where he canoes, hikes, camps, rock climbs, and shoots the longbows he makes himself. He lives in Massachusetts with his wife. ​

James is a professional historian whose published works include two histories of the Inquisition, a documentary history of Columbus's first voyage, a transcription of a colonial era account book from Weymouth, Massachusetts, and a global history of piracy. This means that he is a professional teller of stories, both real and imagined.

James's favorite author is J.R.R. Tolkien, though he will never be able to watch the Peter Jackson Hobbit films again. The first viewing nearly gave him a fit. He loves The Giver and The Book Thief. He has read all the Hunger Games novels, but thinks Katniss should have ended up with Gale. (Sorry Peeta fans.) He enjoys Harry Potter and thinks magic should be real--so long as he owns the Elder Wand.

For more background, images, videos, and information related to my stories and my hobbies, see my Pinterest boards. https://www.pinterest.com/jwelliot1/b...