When his missing daughter returns, a father's search for answers unearths a truth far stranger and more dangerous than he ever could have imagined.

SYNOPSIS:

The Rider family takes their six-year-old daughter, Emily, on a peaceful camping trip. In a blink, she’s gone, no tracks, no witnesses, only her stuffed toy in the trees. The search turns frantic, then hopeless. Untill hours later, police bring a miracle: Emily is found, now a terrified sixteen-year-old, unmistakably the same child in a older body.

The mysterious Briarcroft Research Institute moves fast, folding Emily into “observation” while whispers of an off-book protocol, Ascension, float through keycard halls. As flickering lights and machines trigger painful surges in Emily, her cousin Tiffany sees what the facility hides. Her father’s digging uncovers other leapers: children who vanished, returned older, and were funneled into programs that never officially existed. The deeper he goes, the clearer the pattern. Briarcroft isn’t curing anything; it’s cultivating assets to advance a shadow government’s agenda, mining “forward” knowledge and locking families out behind jurisdiction and jargon.

With custody slipping behind agencies and NDAs, the Riders push through local authorities, Briarcroft’s walls, and federal hands-offs to reclaim their daughter. Emily is theirs, just not as they remember her, and saving her means choosing love and defiance over the comfort of official answers.

THE RETURNED