LIFELESS

Four years ago, the Withering swept the globe. A targeted plague, delivered by the government's "Mandate pills," systematically erased the future by eradicating its women. Now, in the sprawling corpse of what was once Chicago, to be identified as female is to be hunted—a coveted prize for the desperate, maddened men who remain.

Stacey is a ghost, a survivor who moves through the ruins shrouded in layers of grime and anonymity, erasing her form for a chance at one more day. But she is not just a survivor; she is a mother. Her life has a singular, burning purpose: to find the daughter who was ripped from her arms. Lily, her brilliant, inquisitive five-year-old, was designated 'Potential Class A' and taken by the faceless Corporation to a place of whispered horrors known only as 'The Nest'.

Stacey's last, desperate hope lies in a ghost of a different kind: Jonathan Grey, a former detective rumoured to know the Corporation's secrets. But the man she finds is not the hero of the stories. He is a wreck, a man who has lost his own family and has willingly entombed himself in a squalid apartment, seeking oblivion in the bottom of a bottle.

To get her daughter back, Stacey must do the impossible. She must forge an alliance with this broken man, rationalise his past, and drag him back from the abyss he so desperately craves. Together, they must navigate a savage world of feral hunters and ruthless Corporation guards, on a seemingly hopeless quest to find The Nest.

Lifeless is a relentless, gripping story of survival, exploring the fierce, unyielding power of a mother's love in a world steeped in loss, and asking what it takes to find hope—and humanity—in the ashes of civilisation.