After the Disaster, the ice caps are gone. The planet is toxic. The world's remaining superpowers have united as Ela, a para-military planet-nation governed by the authoritarian President Daegal. On a mission to restore the world to its pre-Disaster glory he rules the people of Ela by fear, violence and propaganda. Frequent terrorist attacks are blamed on the hated and hunted Tabia, people born with superhuman powers, who appeared after the Disaster. When the President's military school Bionbyr drafts Freija for mandatory service, she does not resist. She dreams of saving her struggling orphanage home with the salary she'll receive once she completes her training. Far from the rusting towers and rotting streets of her hometown, Bionbyr is deceptively luxurious, an enormous glistening white dome floating between shrunken, lifeless continents. It is here that Freija and her orphan sister Embla, implanted with microchips, tracked, observed, and tested, discover how far the Authority will go to preserve the dark secrets of Ela. And how far they must go to preserve their own.