A spellbinding tale of one woman’s fight for life, and one man’s sacrifice to save her.

Civilization collapses: temperatures rise, viruses destroy medical capacities, ravaging weather systems leave fields barren, and the grid system fails. Human society shrinks until only refugee camps remain. But from this precipice The Centers arise. Telepathic, organic, harmonious biospheres of perfect natural balance. Consciousness is shared, body parts recycled, group mind intuition organizes society; it is a world in which the wrongs of human history have been righted. The Centers save humanity. But 25 years after their creation, a new disease threatens their existence.

Willa arrived at The Center an orphan and has happily assimilated into Center life, but she wakes up after her arm transplant surgery to discover the disease progressing faster in her than anyone before. She must make an emergency journey into the wild Exterior where hyenas prowl overgrown interstates, ice hurricanes shatter summer days, and marauders kill and steal what they can.

Ben, a survivalist in what was once Montana, is the one person who may be able to heal her. But he will have to face his own demons, reckoning with his choice to leave society, now that humans have returned into is life. Willa's arrival unsettles him in ways he thought long dead. And the arrival of the spring herd migrating from the Great Plains has brought an old enemy back; a band of men that tried to kill him years ago has returned to take what he's built.

Six people risk their lives to deliver Willa to safety. But they are up against an invisible enemy, a hidden force of balance embedded within The Centers program which threatens to unleash the lethal mutation into the entire population. Willa's fate may determine the fate of The Centers themselves.

To survive, they must each face something long buried, the dead. The creation of The Centers was marked by a sacrifice, and the haunting memories of that day will no longer rest. Only through choosing death do they have any hope of succeeding.