Here's the Prologue and part of Chapter One...

PROLOGUE

Safe from the deafening, violent roar outside, Zyla-B14-304 stood unmoved alongside the others in her red jumpsuit. Cocooned in the silence of their translucent dome, it was midday, but not to their eyes, as a suffocating attack of sand stretched to the upper atmosphere, obliterating the sun and darkening the sky to a dull brown haze. Lower down before them, tiny needle-like sand particles whipped through the endless desert, slicing and destroying anything in their path. 

As instantly as it began, the storm, which had raged for two days, hushed, and the savagery stilled. Sand particles, previously a violent blur, hovered outside the dome as if caught in a photo and, granule by granule, drifted down. The dark brown thinned, and a dull blue emerged, followed by rays of sunlight until finally, as the last sand particles settled, a sapphire sky and a powerful sun baked the tranquil, sandy terrain. 

Their wait over, Zyla and her twenty-one comrades stepped through the dome's permeable membrane, entering the desert where fine, powdery sand puffed from the toes of their knee-length black boots. It was the year 784 ABE, and the distant sandhills on their left appeared as small mountains as they trekked. Mounds whose prominence was accentuated by the remainder being an endless flat horizon, a desert landscape eroded long ago by the relentless wind. An airstream so destructive that the modest sandhills on the left weren't even nature's doing, initially catching their shape from a long-forgotten city—a metropolis whose remnants might be discovered if one excavated deep below for fragments or studied the peaks closely, where the odd, almost invisible grain of cement or rusted steel might be found.

Returning to her archeological dig, Zyla, sharply attractive with milky-white skin and long dark hair, knelt. The storm had assisted her work by fully exposing the two specimens she had been painstakingly exhuming. 

“It's a good find,” Edgar-B16-188's voice proclaimed over her shoulder.

“Yes,” she replied, looking up. 

Standing beside her, Edgar's vivid blue eyes focused keenly on the specimens, his short black hair perfectly framing his handsome, square, tanned face. 

“They're land-based and appeared to have walked on their hind legs in a similar fashion to us,” she suggested to him, perplexed by the ancient beasts. “In fact, their overall dimensions are remarkably comparable.” She turned from him and returned her gaze to the specimens. “Well, the larger one, at least…he approximates our length.”

“They’re different from anything we found in the Icelands,” he noted. 

“Yes.” 

“I suggest they are a male and female of the same species, the smaller one female,” he said, looking down from his standing position.

“Yes, clearly.” 

She leaned in… The pair had finger-like digits on what appeared to be hands…some of their finger bones were interlocked. 

“Kneel beside me and give me your hand,” she said, her eyes fixed on the delicate, interconnected digits.

“Give my hand to you?”

“No. Kneel beside me and hold your hand toward me.”

“An odd request. But if you wish.” Edgar knelt and held out his hand. “Here you are, my left hand. I trust that is sufficient?”

“Spread your fingers like this,” she said, demonstrating.

“Like this?” he asked, imitating her hand gesture.

“Yes.” She interlocked her fingers with his. “There, you see; that’s what they are doing. They have hands like ours and are holding each other’s hand… And if you note the angle of their heads, they are aligned—they are looking in the same direction.”

“You believe they held hands when it happened?”

“What else could it be?”

“Why would they hold hands?”

“I’m not sure… It’s odd…? Perhaps they both saw it coming and held hands—that’s why their heads are tilted at the same angle?”

“Remarkable… It suggests an awareness of their demise.” His blue eyes flicked to their own intertwined fingers. “Are you finished with my hand?”

“Yes… My apologies,” she replied, releasing him. 

From his kneeling position, he leaned forward and rubbed his thumb across the male’s collarbone.

“The bones are aged, calcified, weakened…they were near the end of their species’ lifespan,” he noted.

“An elderly male and female… It would seem they mate for life.”

“A mating pair. An excellent find for a new species.”

“I'll collect their fragments,” she said, removing her shoulder bag. 

Reaching into it, she pulled out a scalpel and two small containers and, starting with the larger skeleton, scratched bone scrapings from each beast’s forearm into the vessels.

“I'll label them as a pair so they are not separated,” she suggested, snapping the containers shut.

“They have small incisors… Flesh eaters, would you say? Or plant eaters?” he asked, observing the male skeleton’s teeth. 

She leaned in beside him and observed the teeth.

“The tooth line is confused…perhaps both?”

“Interesting.”

“I’ll label them as flesh eaters,” she concluded with a hesitant nod…and an odd sense of premonition.  

PART ONE - Time of Innocence

CHAPTER ONE

There was color…shape…sound.

Things existed.

 I existed.

 My eyelids blinked… I moved… I was something. 

Part of me moved rhythmically up and down in time with the sound and sensation of air flowing through me. The air’s two-way drift was regular and constant and matched the rhythm of my movement… It appeared I was doing it… I was breathing. 

After a time, my awareness and thoughts expanded from the rise and fall of my chest and colorful surroundings to the rest of me… I felt long, more than vision and breathing. 

...That was my introduction to life at the biological age of twenty and in the year 1,203 ABE—what I blurrily recall of it—my first seconds. I had no concept of what I was, nor the muddling colors, sounds, physical sensations, and smells encasing me. What followed was my journey and how I can now best describe it. Looking back, I suppose you’d call it an odyssey. A voyage of wonder, terror, heartbreak, loneliness, and, in the end, destiny. Perhaps above all, it was a pilgrimage from innocence, a crusade in search of love, companionship, and meaning. But the journey wasn’t just mine or Eve’s. It was everyone's…and for some, it was the search for the richness of life itself.