A retired special operations instructor thought surviving classified deployments, deep-sea dives, and hostile interrogations was the ultimate test of human endurance. He was wrong. Life in a quiet coastal village proves far more unpredictable when his toddler daughter discovers independent mobility and an uncanny ability to turn disciplinary measures into colorful butterflies.

When a sudden dimensional collision strikes the household, an impossible second biological anomaly binds itself directly to his abdominal wall. Tucking away his checklists and combat manuals, he must endure another grueling cycle of physical transformation, seismic infant kicks, and sudden hormonal tearstorms over laundry commercials.

With corporate retrieval scouts closing in on their coordinates, the family turns an independent coastal apothecary into a fortified sanctuary. Protected by an interdimensional sorceress wife, a fiercely practical retired naval chemist mother armed with roasted sweet potatoes, and a four-year-old big sister guarding the perimeter with a plastic wrench, one father learns that the hardest mission in the universe is holding a family safe against the dark.