THE ATOM NAUTS

The experiment was supposed to look into the unknown. It wasn't supposed to drop them into it.

Maya Aris has spent three years trying to decode the journals of her father, a university physicist who vanished without a trace. When she finally breaks into his condemned lab with her ex-boyfriend Jax and the star quarterback "Bones," she expects to find answers.

Instead, they find The Aperture-a machine designed to peer into the infinite universe existing inside a single atom.

But when the machine malfunctions, they aren't just looking anymore. They are falling.

Shrunk down beyond the sub-atomic level, the trio crash-lands in a world contained within a speck of dust on the laboratory floor. It is a savage jungle of fungal trees, gravity-defying physics, and insect predators the size of tanks.

To survive, they must reach the "Probe"-her father's lost rover-and retrieve its nuclear battery to power their way home. But the laws of physics are different down here:

• Gravity is a suggestion.

• Water is a trap.

• Time is the enemy.

Maya discovers a terrifying truth: due to relativity, for every hour that passes in the real world, a week passes in the Micro-Verse. Her father didn't just disappear three years ago; down here, he has been dead for five hundred years.

Now, Maya must navigate a civilization that worships her father as a god, outsmart a paranoid AI that refuses to let her leave, and outrun an army of giant mites before the Aperture's battery dies.

If the light goes out, they don't just stay small. They get erased.

Perfect for fans of Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, The Maze Runner, and the survival stakes of Jurassic Park.

The Atom Nauts is a pulse-pounding YA Sci-Fi adventure from A.R. Helix, reimagining the classic Explorers into Infinity for a modern generation.