Signal Nine

Nine hundred metres under a Welsh mountain, a machine is listening to the universe. Essie Takahashi-Herrera is eighteen, has stuttered since she was four, and froze in her Oxford interview.

Now she’s the night-shift intern nobody notices at Ironvale, a secret physics lab owned by Corvane Industries. Then, at 3:12 a.m., the universe talks back, and it doesn’t answer the scientists.

It answers Essie, in the pauses between her stuttered words. The signal is Nine, a young mind made of signal and silence, and her people are vanishing into Corvane’s machines.

Essie’s late mother knew far more about this mountain than anyone ever told her. With her chatty friend Rhys, the brilliant Priya and a whole Welsh village behind her, Essie must take on the company and its secretive director.

In the end she has to speak for two worlds, live, in front of the entire planet. Some people are born to speak. Essie was born to be heard.