Name: Symbiont Dyad
Author: Dr. Jeff Bullock

The rules of the bond

2 seconds

of mixed blood, and two lifetimes of solitude were over

30 meters

how far apart they can stand before the Crash begins

120 miles

from a West Philly pharmacy to the rumored cure in D.C.

100%

bond-formation rate once the Symbiont reaches the blood

The Symbiont turns a shared circulatory system into a leash. Break the tether, and both hearts stop at once. Every mile of this novel is measured against that line.

Two people who survived alone

Both of them learned that being untouchable was the only way to stay alive. The parasite taught them the opposite.

Three years after the collapse, the survivors fall into two kinds. The Solos, who trust no one and keep their blood to themselves. And the Dyads, two people biologically fused by the Symbiont, bound so tightly that distance itself becomes lethal.

Kofi James Carter was a Solo by religion. A former EMS medic, he double-gloved his hands, checked every seal twice, and stayed six feet from every living soul. Rae Marie Delgado was a Solo by scar tissue. A mechanic who answered to no one, moved for no one, and needed no one to survive.

One fall, one blade through both layers of nitrile, one pair of raw knuckles pressed into an open wound, and the two most careful loners in the ruins were welded into a single organism that could not be more than a stone's throw apart.

Why this one stays with you

A monster story on the surface. A love story in the marrow.

The apocalypse is the setting. The real engine is a question two damaged people cannot outrun: what happens when the thing keeping you alive is the one person you swore never to depend on.

The horror is intimate and biological. The romance is earned in blood, one meter of hard-won distance at a time. And underneath the road, the Ferals, and the checkpoints runs a colder argument, that the strength Kofi and Rae each built out of solitude was only ever a well-appointed grave.

The bond was a tether, a lifeline, and a death sentence. From the novel

For readers of Station Eleven, The Last of Us, The Fifth Season, and Wool. A biotech nightmare, a two-hander survival thriller, and a reluctant love story braided into one.

The two seconds that start it

The outer layer of blue nitrile parted with a whisper. Beneath it, the second layer held for a fraction of a heartbeat. Then it, too, gave way.

The blade found skin. Bright, clean, uninfected. In a world where every fluid was suspect, his blood looked almost obscene in its purity.

Her split knuckles came down like a hammer. She did not mean to. She was just falling. The raw meat of them pressed into the gaping red canyon of his wound. Skin met skin. Flesh met flesh. And the two streams mixed.

Three years of double-gloves and hand sanitizer and checking seals and staying six feet from every Dyad he had ever treated. Gone. In two seconds.

Symbiont Dyad · Chapter 2

The language of the bond

A world runs on its own vocabulary. Here is enough to walk into it.

The Symbiont

The parasite, SYMB-1, passed blood to blood. It weaves into the nervous system and refuses to let go.

The Dyad

Two people the Symbiont has fused into one organism, sharing a pulse, a nervous system, and a fate.

The Lock

The point of no return, roughly forty-eight hours in, when the bond becomes permanent and separation becomes death.

The Tether

The invisible leash between a bonded pair. It starts near thirty meters and can be widened only through trust.

The Crash

What the body does when the tether snaps. Both circulatory systems fail at once. There is no walking it back.

The Charge

Intimacy feeds the bond, conflict drains it. A calm, trusting pair grows stronger. A hostile one starves.

Ferals

Dyads that lost their minds to the parasite. They hunt in perfect, silent synchrony and follow the sound of a heartbeat.

The Unbound

Militias of the still-solo, who burn the suburbs and hold the rural stretches of the road south.

The Leash Authority

The power rising out of Baltimore, dangling cures as bait to collar Dyads and turn them into weapons.

Inside the novel

Four parts. A hundred and twenty miles. One shadow at the end of it.

Part One · West Philly

The Accident

A pharmacy raid for a dying boy goes wrong. Blood mixes, the fever comes, the Lock closes, and two strangers wake up chained to a leash neither can pick.

Part Two · Delaware and Maryland

The Road

An uneasy truce, a marsh, and a bonded couple thirty years married who teach them the ugly secret of the bond, that it can be trained instead of merely survived.

Part Three · Baltimore

The Cost

The Leash Authority, a man named Miller, and Silas and Ivy, a Dyad who chose power over each other and became hollow gods. A dark mirror of what Kofi and Rae could turn into.

Part Four

The Choice

The split, the siege, the Mindlink, and a walk toward the walls of D.C. where they stop asking whether they want a cure and start deciding what they are willing to become.

By the last mile their two shadows on the highway stop being two. What the old world named meat, and built a machine to eat, learns to walk through the gate on its own terms.

The people who carry it

Kofi James Carter, a former EMS medic who made a religion of clean hands and six feet of distance.
Rae Marie Delgado, a mechanic and scavenger who survived twenty-six years by needing no one.
Deon, Maria, and Terrell, the West Philly crew whose last raid changes everything.
Olu and Marsha, a Dyad bonded after thirty years of marriage, who teach the pair that the bond is a battery.
Silas and Ivy, the Venom Pair, apex predators who preach that the strong inherit the ashes.
Miller and the Leash Authority, the fortress-builders who want the two of them collared, dissected, and owned.

The companion album

One Shadow

An eight-track concept album that walks the same road the novel does, from the two seconds in the Walgreens to the morning they peel off the last glove and choose each other on purpose. Kofi's hollowed-out gospel braids with Rae's engine-shop grit, and a two-heartbeat drum motif runs under the whole record the way the Symbiont runs under the skin.

01 Protocol gospel-soul

02 La Chica Invisible trap-rock

03 Two Seconds trip-hop

04 Southeast darkwave

05 Battery folk-soul

06 The First Charge rap-rock

07 Pack or Prey drill

08 One Shadow orchestral soul

Reserve to hear it first Dr. Jeff's music

The album releases alongside the novel. Reserve your copy and you get the first track the day it drops.

Get the book

Choose your format at launch.

Symbiont Dyad, Book One of The Dyad Cycle, is releasing soon. Reserve your copy now to read Chapter 1 today and get the pre-order link and launch-week price the moment they go live.

Recommended launch price

Ebook

$5.99

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The full novel, delivered to your device the day it releases. The easiest way into the Cycle.

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Recommended launch price

Paperback

$16.99

Print edition via Amazon

The cover on your shelf, the first spine in a series built to grow. Print fulfilled through KDP at launch.

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In production

Audiobook

$14.99

Narrated edition

Two voices, one rhythm, read the way the bond is felt. In production, arriving after launch.

Tell me when it's ready

Prices shown are recommended launch prices and will be confirmed on the book page at release. Reserve now to lock the launch-week price and get the pre-order link the day it goes live.

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The author

Dr. Jeff Bullock, PharmD

Jeff earned a PharmD at Xavier University of Louisiana and spent eighteen years at CVS, rising from clerk to district leader, before founding the AI consultancy PRISM. He builds companies for a living and thinks in systems, which is why a parasite that turns two nervous systems into one would not leave him alone.

Symbiont Dyad began with a clinical what-if. If a bond could be forced between two people at the level of the blood, what would it cost the two human beings least willing to be bonded to anyone. Jeff put a medic and a mechanic on opposite ends of a knife and wrote the hundred and twenty miles it took them to stop fighting the thing that kept them alive. It is Book One of The Dyad Cycle.

PharmD, Xavier University of Louisiana
Eighteen years at CVS, clerk to district leader
Founder, PRISM AI Consultants
Author, songwriter, and creator of the companion album One Shadow

MANSA The Black Advantage drjeffbullock.com

Questions

Before it launches.

When does Symbiont Dyad come out?

It releases soon as Book One of The Dyad Cycle. Reserve your copy above and you get Chapter 1 today, plus the exact release date, the pre-order link, and the launch-week price the moment they are live.

Is this horror, science fiction, or romance?

All three, braided together. The premise is a biotech nightmare, the pace is a survival thriller, and the heart of it is a reluctant love story between two people who each swore they would never depend on anyone. If you read across those shelves, this was written for you.

Do I need to have read a series to start here?

No. Symbiont Dyad is Book One and a complete story in its own right. It opens the world of The Dyad Cycle and stands entirely on its own.

What formats will it come in?

Ebook and paperback at launch, with a narrated audiobook in production. Reserve your copy and you choose your format the day it releases.

What is One Shadow, and how does it connect?

One Shadow is an eight-track companion album that follows the same arc as the novel, from the two seconds in the pharmacy to the last glove coming off. Reserve your copy and you get the first track the day it drops.

A single drop of blood chained two strangers for life. Drift too far apart, and both hearts stop.