In a post-pandemic future where AI has infiltrated daily life, the line between what is real and what is digital has eroded to nothing. Algorithms and robots have replaced everything from the criminal justice system to individual loved ones. As long as she can remember, ten-year-old Kate has felt like someone was watching her. She has been orphaned since the pandemic, her foster parents find her eccentric and off-putting, and her legal guardian is nowhere to be seen. Now, an algorithm has predicted the very worst --- ​within 30 days, Kate will either be killed, or become a killer. When two police officers arrive at her home in Maine, Kate is urged by her trusted AI Interactive Toy (a talking stuffed seal named Zeno) to make an immediate escape. Confused and looking for answers, the girl sets a course for New York City and begins an Orwellian journey into the unknown.

Jacob Underwood is a hired assassin. Suffering from a condition that causes people to believe they are dead, Jacob perceives himself as nothing but a Shell with no emotion and no sense of right or wrong. Jacob's handler assigns him the task of tracking down an associate who has disappeared and neutralizing her. But as his new assignment draws him inside a labyrinthine network of dark dealings, Jacob finds himself up against something he is completely incapable of understanding.