Running Dark - James Bryron Love

A debt that can't be repaid. A universe that can't decide how to die.

A cargo pilot is eight months into a routine haul, fueled by the desperate hope of a completion bonus that will finally clear his catastrophic gambling debts. He's not running from a bank; he's running for his life. The people he owes have made the stakes clear, using his ex-wife's address as their primary reference point. For a man who has lost everything at the tables, this contract is the last hand he'll ever get to play.

But space itself is beginning to cheat.

His navigation AI has detected a terrifying anomaly: the stars are moving. In a forty-light-year region of the outer colonies, the fundamental metrics of spacetime are becoming unstable. In some sectors, space is contracting; in others, it is tearing itself apart. It's as if every terminal cosmological theory-the Big Crunch, the Big Rip, the Big Slurp-is happening simultaneously. The laws of physics are being rewritten, and the boundary is moving inward.

The inhabited systems where his family lives are already inside the zone. They are breathing in the end of the universe and they don't even know it.

Isolated in a ship that shouldn't be flying through a reality that shouldn't exist, he is the only one who sees the math. But to the company, he's just a broken addict with a "psychological fitness" flag. Now, he must calculate the ultimate transparency: how to save a family that won't speak to him from a disaster no one believes is happening, all while the debt collectors count down the minutes to Friday.

He knows the odds. He's always known the odds. This time, he's betting the entire galaxy on a hand he can't afford to lose.