The Fig Wasp Protocol
A Novel

About this book:

Deep in the Amazon canopy, a forensic entomologist harvests figs from a strangler tree—and discovers a seventy-million-year-old mutualism has turned predatory. The wasps inside aren't pollinators; they're parasitoids, swimming in a broth of animal protein they've coerced the plant to manufacture. Their larvae hunt. Their mother's ovipositor is a serrated scalpel. And Dr. Aris Thorne has just been stung.

By the time the river launch reaches the floating lab, the bite on Aris's calf isn't swelling—it's *organizing*. Something is moving beneath his skin, rewriting his chemistry with a precision that defies taxonomy. As a storm traps them on the water, the specimens in the microscope begin to leap for the steel forceps, and Aris realizes the horrifying truth: the fig wasp hasn't just switched hosts. It's been waiting for something larger. Something warm. Something that walks on two legs.

*The Fig Wasp Protocol* is a relentless biological thriller where evolutionary biology meets body horror. From the suffocating canopy to the sterile glare of a quarantined greenhouse, every chapter tightens the spiral around a simple, terrifying question: what happens when nature's most specialized partnership decides the contract is void—and the next host is you?