This is a different near future.

On Aretha, corporations, like great families, vie for power, control, and profit, grinding under their heels all that stand in their way.

It's not Earth. For Maclin, a young Earth-born soldier, that's a problem. He wakes up in this new world, his memory of his time on Earth more a suggestion than anything concrete. He's found by the Junklanders, a group of people that reject the corporations and their attempts to own all of humanity. With their help, he's on the fast track to getting home.

But there's another problem. He's an outworlder, and they have a bit of a reputation. The first of his kind brought the tech virus, a contagion that threatens to swallow the world every couple decades. The second disappeared without a trace. As the third, he's an asset to any corporate strategy, and at least one knows of his existence: Homura. Their matriarch, the enigmatic Sakura Homura, has no interest in allowing her most prized possession a chance to escape.

And corporations have a habit of taking what they want—even if it means a little killing.

Maclin will have to take advantage of the strange powers this new world has bestowed on him or risk becoming a pawn in a grand game.