The Earth's surface is now uninhabitable and Ariel has lived in a completely different world than her parents. She has spent her whole life in the underground caverns under her once quaint small town. Now, she finds her community regressing back to the days of yore where the sick and elderly are killed out of convenience to the healthy...They take up too many resources and are marked for death. Because of this, finding friends is hard...But when Ariel meets Will, she begins to let her guard down. The two cannot help but form a bond and begin to notice strange goings on in their underground community. When a close friend goes missing, the two begin to question things that their elders do not. The two teens begin their own investigation into the disappearance and find out that the conspiracy falls deeper in their dystopian world than they had ever imagined.