Description

Trueborns rule the planet Loka. Lowborns avoid trueborns, but the enslaved GENs—Genetically Engineered Non-humans—must obey trueborns to survive. A handful of liberated GENs—the circuitry in their bodies dissolved forever—are now in two worlds, passing as lowborns while hiding their enslaved past.

Pheno, a former GEN, built a wall around himself when he lost his brother nine years ago. As a seventeenth-year, he's liberated and living as a lowborn, but if he has a place in the world, he hasn't found it.

He keeps himself hidden away in a basement, updating computer tech for the underground Kinship movement. He has no interest in a Kinship mission that would take him out of his self-imposed exile. But that all changes when a Brigade enforcer cruelly kills an innocent young girl.

His assignment—devise a way to disable GEN circuitry illegally installed in seven seycats. The wild 6-legged felines were intended as pets, but they're too dangerous and must be released into the wild. If Pheno can solve the puzzle that will free the seycats, he could use the same process to liberate more GENs.

Then he meets Sarra, a GEN girl scarred by torture. As they spend time together in the seycat sanctuary, a powerful connection builds between them. For the first time, Pheno feels he can put his trust in the hands of someone else.

But when Sarra asks him to make an awful and treacherous choice, Pheno is torn. Can he do what she so desperately wants, even though it could cost him everything?