Animotions

What if your pet could finally tell you what they're thinking?

When two amateur researchers at a pet supply company rig up a brainwave-reading device as a side project, it works better than expected - but only on one animal. Josie, the office tortoiseshell cat, produces neural signals that are clearer, more organized, and more distinct than anything they've ever seen. The question isn't why the device works. The question is why it works so much better on her.

The trail leads from a chain of shelter records to an exotic animal importer to a single extraordinary fact: Josie's ancestors were rescued from the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, where a generation of radiation exposure has done something impossible to the local wildlife. The animals there don't just have unusual neural patterns - they seem to broadcast them. And somewhere in the abandoned ruins of Pripyat, a pack of semi-wild dogs is wailing into the night in vocalizations that don't match anything in the scientific literature.

When Ukrainian biologist Dr. Kateryna Bondar makes contact, her message is urgent: come to the Zone, come soon, and don't tell anyone you're coming. Because someone else has already noticed.

Racing through the contaminated wilderness against a rival team with military funding and no ethical constraints, the two researchers discover that the mutation is real, extraordinary, and potentially world-changing. But getting the data out means surviving a cat-and-mouse chase through collapsing Soviet hospitals, a confrontation at Pripyat's iconic rusted Ferris wheel, and a sprint to publication against a charismatic Russian scientist who intends to own the discovery.

Back home, with their data intact and Josie waiting on the couch, they have one chance to prove what they found - and to decide who it belongs to.

The answer, it turns out, might come from the cat.

ANIMOTIONS is a science fiction thriller in the tradition of Michael Crichton's accessible, high-stakes techno-fiction. It will appeal to readers of The Martian, Jurassic Park, and Annihilation - and to anyone who has ever wondered what their pet is trying to tell them.