Hubris Rising (Echoes of Tomorrow, #2)

Nineteen years after humanity's last hope took root on DaVinci, Phoebe Makinde lives in the shadow of her mother's legend. Genetically engineered to survive the alien Bloom, Phoebe should embody the colony's future. Instead, she's plagued by migraines, seizures, and a gnawing sense she'll never measure up.

While her peers choose careers and partners, Phoebe drifts between jobs, befriending the Hyperionites, outcast descendants of a failed colony who have spliced alien DNA into their blood. To the rest of humanity, they're abominations. To Phoebe, they're the only ones who understand what it means to be different.

Everything changes when she meets Atlas, a boy from the anti-science Naturalist domes. He should be her enemy. His people condemn genetic modification as heresy. Yet Atlas carries a rare mutation that lets him survive outside the domes without alteration, a "Divine Blueprint" his leaders claim proves their purity. Drawn together by forbidden attraction, Phoebe and Atlas uncover a truth both their peoples have buried in lies.

But the past won't stay buried. Survivors of DaVinci's first, failed settlement emerge from hiding, and bring with them a brain-ravaging plague that pushes colonists into madness and violence. As fear spreads and factions turn on each other, Phoebe discovers her mother may be secretly working with the very zealots who want her kind erased.

With time running out and her own body betraying her, Phoebe must decide where her loyalty lies: with the mother who created her, the boy who should be her enemy, or a fractured humanity racing toward extinction.

For fans of Neal Stephenson, Blake Crouch, and Gattaca, Hubris Rising is a sweeping tale of forbidden love, genetic destiny, and the battle to define what it means to be human.