Serycia Fade, a slave marked for death... I run into the most impoverished level of our walled city, where poisons and toxins swirl in oily black puddles on the streets, and people are gathering in a square in line for food. But they can't be here. I scream at them to get out, get away. And the world explodes. Soren Lost, a Level 1 nonentity... She breaks into my life like a shard of sunlight shining in a squalid world just before the square explodes. Staggering out of the rubble, she offers me a pill that will give me a month of health in exchange for me getting her back out of Level 1. Only thing is, a powerful man has her marked for death; she's got city protectors on her tail; her former master has been mind-wiped and doesn't remember she exists; and I have a sister to protect. I should refuse, should leave her mired in her own troubles. But there's no one else to save her. So I take the month of health and do my damnedest to save her myself. Good thing, too, because if I get her to the lab on Level 3, her research might be the key to finding the cure for the virus that dooms us all to die at twenty-six. If I can keep her alive that long.