Sonya Lano

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.