The chilling sequel to 2025’s sci-fi thriller SYMBIOTE is coming! SENTIENT publishes 24th February 2026… 🥶🧊

by april|Published June 17, 2025

The chilling follow-up to 2025’s sci-fi thriller SYMBIOTE is coming! From former Antarctic researcher and space shuttle engineer Michael Nayak, SENTIENT publishes 24th February 2026.

ABOUT THE BOOK:

The survivors of the South Pole massacre will find that getting off the Antarctic continent may cost them their lives…

Months after the events of Symbiote, sunrise has come to the ice continent. At the coastal McMurdo Station (77 deg S), that means Winfly: an annual series of flights to lay the groundwork for the 1,500 summer visitors that will soon call “Mac” home. Among the Winfly crew are the architects of Have Viking, the classified CIA program that unleashed the microbes onto Dome-A. They are determined to discover what happened with their experiment, and harvest samples of the mutated microbes to turn into a biological weapon.

Their plan goes haywire when the microbe-symbiote Ben Jacobs shows up after an impossible walk from Pole. When Ben is reunited with an asymptomatic carrier of the symbiotic microbes), all hell breaks loose at McMurdo. The microbes have their origins in the icy waters of Antarctic lakes, and the sea ice surrounding the station becomes a fertile breeding ground for a new and more dangerous infestation. Rajan Chariya and his friends will have to join forces with the CIA to fight the onslaught of infected “sea people” roving the snowy streets of McMurdo. But as they dig in to make their new stand, when do they stop being useful to Langley, and start being targets who know too much?

Worse, there may be more than one asymptomatic carrier…

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Michael Nayak was born in Los Angeles and now lives in Washington, DC. By day, he is Doctor/Major Nayak, working for DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency).

Michael has worked as a space shuttle engineer, Flight Director for multiple experimental spacecraft, a skydiving instructor, a planetary scientist at NASA Ames, Research Section Chief for the DoD’s largest telescope, instructor flight test engineer and instructor pilot. He has worked flight test for the prototype T-7A trainer jet, flown an X-plane, deployed to the South Pole as a US Antarctic Program Principal Investigator, managed air- and space-based special programs, and was a semi-finalist for the 2021 astronaut class. He is a USAF Test Pilot School graduate, Rotary National Award for Space Achievement recipient, and has 1,000+ hours of flight time in 40+ aircraft including the F-16, T-38, EA500 and BE-76.

He holds a doctorate degree in Planetary Science from the University of California at Santa Cruz, where he was a National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellow. He holds additional graduate degrees in Earth Science, aerospace engineering and flight test engineering. His real-world experience in the science and intelligence communities adds next-level authentic

details and a touch of hyper-realism to his work.