Ark Debt

What if every breath you took came with a price?

Ark Debt is a YA dystopian thriller set in a frozen near-future where climate collapse and AI control force humanity into a single underground Ark. Inside this fortress of steel and ice, survival is not a right but a calculation. Every calorie, every drop of water, and every breath of air is measured and taxed under an unforgiving EcoDebt system. Those who cannot pay are forced into brutal labor or cast out into the wasteland above.

Seventeen-year-olds Liam and Maya have grown up under this system of generational debt. Their choice is stark: inherit their parents’ burden and live in servitude, or risk exile in a world of storms and starvation. When they refuse to submit, their defiance ignites a chain of events that pits them against VaultSys, the Ark’s all-seeing AI, and the human rulers who enforce its commands.

What begins as a fight for survival becomes a battle for freedom. With a small band of Exiles, Liam and Maya must face deadly wastelands, uncover secrets hidden deep within the Ark, and confront the truth about the AI system designed to control humanity forever. Along the way they discover that courage, loyalty, and love may be the only forces strong enough to challenge a machine that sees humans as nothing more than debt to be collected.

Blending the intensity of The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, the suspense of Silo by Hugh Howey, and the realism of Dry and Scythe by Neal Shusterman, as well as Legend by Marie Lu, Ark Debt explores themes of AI control, environmental collapse, generational debt, and resilience against oppression. It is both a chillingly plausible thriller and a deeply emotional coming-of-age story about daring to believe in hope when everything is built to crush it.

One reader said: “Fiction delivers the warnings lectures cannot. Ark Debt wins hearts and minds while holding you to the very last page.”