6 minutes and 32 seconds- that's the average time it takes a person to get through the food line and exit the room. Gia Hamiltoni calculates every move, every voice inflection, every second. Living 6,000 feet under the sea, there is no way in or out of the Trellis Facility. Where no sunlight shines, Gia and her workmate, Leal, stare at the surveillance screens to keep everyone safe. But when a girl disappears, Gia ventures into dangerous waters. Searching for truth, she risks everything to unravel a tangle of deception.

What is Gia up against?

Monsters outside.

Accidents inside.

The Trellis Facility can't be the way humans were meant to live.

With her father, Garridon Hamiltoni, as the Head of security, Gia was trained to keep the community safe. She knows that audio surveillance is difficult to understand when too many people speak at once, which is why the community members are discouraged from speaking in the corridors. She knows that certain words- like Alaster- trigger the artificial intelligence systems to listen closer to the conversation.

The suffocating control can't withstand the weight of questions about what happened to the girl who disappeared. Searching for truth, Gia uncovers the mess of deception around the mythical submarine, called Alaster, which could provide a chance to leave the Trellis.

Lurk in through the Trellis Facility that has tighter government control than Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games. Experience action with Gia and her friends as their adventures take more turns than Michael Scott'sThe Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel.

In the first book of the Alaster Trilogy, A. H. Ostmo shapes an underwater world that explores belief systems and challenges worldviews. With microbial-based systems and energy from hydrothermal vents, the Trellis facility is located in one of the most extreme environments in the universe. No sunlight, shadowy creatures, and more pressure than a human can withstand- what better setting to examine the internal conflicts of the human mind?