Kris Ballard is a motorcycle courier. A nobody. Level 2 trash in a multi-level city that stretches from San Francisco to the Mexican border-a land where corporations make all the rules. A runaway since the age of fourteen, Kris struggled to set up her life, barely scraping by, working hard to make it without anyone’s help. But a late day delivery changes everything when she walks in on the murder of one of her clients. Now she’s stuck with a mysterious package that everyone wants. It looks like the corporations want Kris gone, and are willing to go to almost any length to make it happen. Hunted, scared, and alone, she retreats to the only place she knows she can hide: the Level 1 streets. Fleeing from people that seem to know her every move, she is rescued by Miller-a member of an underground resistance group-only to be pulled deeper into a world she doesn’t understand. Together Kris and Miller barely manage to stay one step ahead of the corporate killers, but it’s only a matter of time until Miller’s resources and their luck run out….

Second in a trilogy, this far-future science fiction is set in Los Angeles-action adventure with a cyberpunk tone. Kris Ballard’s life changed irrevocably when, a year ago, she was targeted for termination by the Meridian corporation, one of the mega-conglomerates that controls the government in this dystopian future. She hid amongst the underground resistance-but now, right as her training with the anti-corporate movement is nearing its end, their compound is destroyed. Ready or not, Kris and the other trainees are recalled to the dangerous metropolis of San Angeles. But their transport is shot down and Ian Miller, the man she loves, is captured. Someone, it seems, is using him to get to Kris. With the help of a retired operative with PTSD, and the mysterious man who fled the scene when Kris’s parents were killed, Kris searches for any sign of Ian. As the corporations battle civil unrest-and each other-the city slowly shuts down. Kris is running out of time.

The Rebel is the third and final installment in Gerald Brandt’s near-future science fiction San Angeles series Kris Merrill is a member of a small insurgent group operating within a multi-level metropolis that stretches from San Francisco to the Mexican border. Her attempt at rescuing Ian Miller failed, leaving her alone and her unborn son without a father. The insurgents don’t trust her, Kai has disappeared completely, and Pat is trying to control how Kris should mourn the loss of Ian. Without the trust of the insurgents, Kris is relegated to low level assignments for them, and trying desperately to keep her pregnancy a secret. She is alone. War has started between the corporations. The people living in the lower levels of San Angeles have become the victims, starving and being rounded up to be soldiers in the war. Torn between working with the insurgents as they become more like the corporations they are fighting, and helping the people of the lower levels, Kris doesn’t know what to do. Facing the return of an enemy who will stop at nothing to have revenge, Kris struggles with loss and discovering who she really is. Author bio: Gerald Brandt’s short story “Storm” appeared in the 2013 Prix Aurora Award-winning anthology Blood & Water. By day, he’s an IT professional and coding guru. In his limited spare time, he enjoys riding his motorcycle, rock climbing, camping, and spending time with his family.

The third and final book of the Quantum Empirica sci-fi series explores an alternate earth where powerful Threads have the power to alter reality as we know it.

Scarred and disfigured, Darwin Lloyd travels the country with Teresa, trying to find a life without Threads–quantum strings that can change or control reality. His only real skill in the new reality he helped create is the Dance, passed on to him by Baila as she took his ability to use Threads.

But time doesn’t stand still. Though SafeHaven and Forsyth have control of the QPS, the machine Darwin and his dad built and the reason the Threads exist, and the remnants of Salem and the Qabal are building an army to take it back.

With another brutal war looming over him, Darwin will have to make a decision that may change his and Teresa’s lives forever.

This first book of a new sci-fi series introduces an alternate earth where powerful Threads have the power to alter reality as we know it.

Pulled from his world by an experiment gone wrong, Darwin Lloyd is one of the few that can see the Threads–quantum strings that can be manipulated to change or control reality. On an alternate Earth ravaged by war, Darwin is torn between the Qabal and SafeHaven, his only goal to find a way back home and stop the same fate from happening in his time line.

Threads–thought of as a gift from the machine he helped his father create–and Threaders are both loved and hated, treated as gods by some and as criminals by others. Out of his element, Darwin must learn how to control the Threads and possibly join the hated Qabal to find the path back to his dad.

But Thread use comes at a price. Follow the possibilities and probabilities too far and the human mind shatters, leaving the Threader a mindless, drooling husk. Yet the Thread’s pull is almost irresistible, and a constant battle for those that can see them.

In this strange new world, Darwin discovers what he could never find on his own: friends, family, love, a mother he lost years before, and a younger sister he never had.

This second book of a groundbreaking sci-fi series introduces an alternate earth where powerful Threads can alter reality as we know it.

After almost a year, the gate between worlds has opened again, and through it Darwin Lloyd hears the anguished screams of Teresa, the love he left behind. He returns to her world–one where quantum Threads can change or control reality
and ordinary people can do extraordinary things.

But nothing is as he had left it. The Threads, though still plentiful, no longer respond the way they once had. Groups of Threaders must work together to perform even the simplest of tasks. Yet the Qabal continue to grow and create
Skends to do their bidding.

With the changes, war has returned to the world, pitting the Qabal against the Threaders of SafeHaven and Forsyth. With the weakened Threads and the increase in Skends, SafeHaven is losing. Darwin’s return is greeted with hatred by
some, and worship by others … all for the same reason. He changed the world by turning off the Source. Darwin needs to find Teresa, and reverse what he has done before the Qabal take away everything he loves about the world he has entered.