On the brink of execution, 16 year old Ebba den Eeden is unexpectedly elevated from the bunker deep in South Africa's Table Mountain where she has lived all her life, believing—as do all the other teenagers who toil daily to make their food and power the bunker—that the world "Above" is uninhabitable due to a nuclear holocaust. Instead, she is heiress to a massive fortune—one that everyone wants to control. While dealing with the machinations of the High Priest, his handsome son Hal, and the rules and regulations of a society and religion she doesn't understand, she must also try to save her three friends, still stuck in the bunker and facing execution any day.