Twin towers are decorating the Manhattan skyline, paragons of oppression and destruction.
Down below, in the Stone Desert's gray emptiness people are desperately striving to survive, to live a semblance of a life.
Lewis Talbot and Carla Wolf are not who they are. They know this. But they don't know why, at least he doesn't. They are growing up. Carla is only eighteen, but she has already traveled the world, in search of what she may never find. Lewis is only fifteen, but strange stirrings and notions have haunted him since the early nights of his life.
And they encounter many interesting people on their Journey, the four Warrens, Patrick, Ethel, Ted and Liz, Jean Gidman and Eric Carr, and others. They all have a reason for being in Modern York, for visiting, for living there. Ted and Liz arrive in town, sick and tired of life, of everything, desperately seeking Life, seeking renewal, a reason to go on living.
Modern York is not so different from old York. War is being prepared there. Peace is being prepared there. The drama of life called the Janus Clan will come to a preliminary conclusion there.
It's an old and true saying: Nobody is exactly who they appear. The question is what is lurking beneath the mask, below the surface, and what may happen when the masks fall.