Try this:
In the Adastra world, the Parents are concerned by the Other, by the encroaching Darkness. They need to know more about it, but how to probe it without provocation or getting contaminated? Earth offers a welcome opportunity.
Earth is an anomaly in three ways: it is a physical host to a chunk
of Darkness, it is, uniquely, home a multitude of intelligent
species which have self-uplifted to full sapience. Third, whilst it
has been contacted on numerous occasions, it has always thrown off
those contacts and all local memory and external records of them are
lost, apparently erased in the Sibling databases by some alarming
intervention.
The Parents need to observe this last process in action, in order to
secure their data structures. Hence, contact is needed, using a
sacrificial sibling species of no great intrinsic value. The wolves
will do just fine. Their ability to travel interstellar routes is
immediately rescinded in order to isolate the culture. The Parents
also want to observe the potential for contamination through third
party carriers, and in order to find such a carrier, they look at
records for past human interactions with the local instance of
Darkness. The famous student post by Chase on the Echo riots comes
up in the search, and so they look into Chase.
Motivation of Amicus is also started. Due to his social status, he is the only wolf over whom they have strong influence and for the same reason, the only potential interstellar traveller. Examining records from Earth, Chase's social media posting about his history with Leo comes up, suggesting strong
wolf-human interaction potential. Chase becomes the target carrier of the Darkness, and he is invited to speak at a paranormal interest seminar in Rome, specifically on his Echo experiences. Delighted by the escape from his closed off world, he accepts. The rest proceeds as scripted. You would need to
increase the currently-naive MC's sophistication a notch in the early scenes to
catch Chase's world weary cynicism, and there is a later graphic
showing distinctly human genitalia. Nothing there that an Photoshop
intervention wouldn't fix. Chase and his love of water needs playing up in the lakeside scenes.
The riots that start shortly after Chase's arrival on Adastra are taken by the Parents as a sign that contamination can be spread by a carrier. earth, with its several Darkness hotspots is, therefore, seen as a dangerous source of contamination. Consideration is given to its destruction by one faction, whilst another presses for containment and further study. Earth is, after all, nowhere near achieving interstellar flight on its own.
We see that the attack by Cato on Amicus and Chase was engineered by the Parents with the specific end of installing a neck-based device to monitor Chase's interactions with the Darkness after he is returned to earth. Back on Earth, the 'convenient' outbreak of bird flu that he causes has him sequestered by the US Government in a secure facility in Arizona, 'coincidentally' close to Echo.
In isolation and confinement, his neck collar comes into action. Chase sees the universe as the parents do, as a multilayered structure in which various classes of intelligence have their particular domains. He explores this, meeting the Monitor which instructs him in how to understand this new situation. The local geography is dominated by the Darkness, which exists by virtue of the disorder that it can create in aware minds. Chaotic disorder will not do: it has to be a falling from potential, from grace, on behalf of conscious minds for it to feed. It sets out to subvert such minds and to pull them from their possible attainments.
Chase watches it in action, and notes that humans have developed a means to manage its influence, at least under mild challenge and at a distance. Close to, however, all is overwhelmed. Not-Earth based intelligences are, though, utterly vulnerable to it effects. During his exploration, he proves to be too conspicuous and is noticed. The entity, curious, uses Flynn's demonic avatar and its usual tricks to disrupt social order at the containment facility. Chase escapes, pursued by Flynn, and discovers where he has been held. He meets with familiar local characters, who hide him.
In the middle of this ramshackle hunt, Amicus arrives, having heard of Chase's confinement. during or subsequent to the escape. (Chase is tagged so that he can be tracked by the Galactics, separately from the Parents.) Reunion is punctuated by Chase's horror that his lover is utterly vulnerable to the Darkness, which latches onto his mind. Subsequent Leo-Amicus-Salamander dynamics are spectacular, and the Darkness is fed by them.
Chase goes into full White Knight mode, developing weapons to assault the Darkness in its lair. He transforms Flynn back to his former self and fights along side him. Amicus is preserved and a major reunion occurs. This victory opens the Darkness's archive of victimhood: can the preserved victims be restored to life, but stripped of their imposed negatives. Is that tantamount to destroying their identities, 'censoring' them? Flynn has strong opinions, the stronger when the restoration of Sydney becomes a practical possibility. The Monitor becomes a part of the debate: what is identity, what should and does survive death? And is the view of the Parents absolute, or merely imposed because they have power? The Monitors, hundreds strong, begin to question the eight Parents whom they serve. The mechanism by which Earth contains the epidemic Darkness is studied for its urgent potential use.
The role of the Parents becomes clear to the Sapientiae and the casual experimental use of the wolves chills all of the evolved species. If them then why not us, too? The revelation of Parental bad faith brings a system-wide political pot comes to the boil. Are the Parents kind overseers or manipulative opportunists? This can be a major plot thread in Khemia.
Insight into autopsy of the Darkness remnant casts light on the nature of the Parents. Both exist by virtue of an infrastructure: to eliminate the one, you would have to destroy the other. Will the Parents sacrifice themselves to Save the Universe? So what are the Parents? Kind nurturing entities of players of games? Wait for our next instalment.