Rafael Ward

Historian Rafael Ward is a good citizen, teaching students the government approved narrative of the nation's history. Until the black-baggers come calling. They have a job for him, one he's not allowed to refuse: Ward must go undercover as a Believer and smuggler to hunt down and destroy the artifacts he cherishes. Before he knows it, he's following fugitive Hannah MacKenzie on a fool's quest to recover the legendary Vase of Soissons, a Dark Age relic prophesized to restore faith to the world.

It's two years since Rafael Ward walked into the Tower with a backpack full of explosives. Two years since he destroyed REC headquarters and became the most hated man in the Republic. He's a fugitive, haunted by the lives he's taken, trying to find anonymity in the remote towns of the Western Districts. He’s content to drink himself into oblivion.

The revolution has begun. The Republic is in turmoil. Meanwhile, 7,000 miles away, Rafael Ward is teaching again. Granted, he’s a prisoner in a secret desert fortress, and Sam is still in a coma, but for the first time in years, he’s almost content. Until Sam’s doctor, Rivka, reveals the key to Sam’s recovery can be found in the lost tomb of Hannibal Barca. Ward and Rivka engineer a daring escape, only to find themselves in a race against time and a mysterious assassin, to unearth Hannibal’s secrets. What they discover in the tomb will determine more than Sam’s fate.

The general prays for peace. The smuggler retires. The cyborg dreams of being human. The assassin closes in. And the Seer is missing. It is the most guarded secret in the fledgling kingdom of New Jerusalem—that its leader has disappeared, leaving behind only a series of cryptic ciphers. Now, with the fate of her new nation in the balance, MacKenzie must find Rafael Ward to help decode the Seer’s clues. Clues leading to the oldest library in the Americas. To the most brutal conquistador of the age of discovery.