In 22nd century America, mega-cities have grown while rural communities have vanished. Into those vacuums, poverty and violence have rushed and spread like wildfire, and from that disorder, a New State rises, along with the threat of civil war between forces as cosmic and as antagonistic as the sun and the moon. Mara Moises is a detective for the International Security Agency. From her station in New York City she is dispatched with the task of finding the leaders of this New State and subverting their rebellion from within, but comes to find that the enemy's reach is longer than she ever feared possible. In an alternate timeline, a boy runs away from the ghost of his dead father then inadvertently into the arms of the rural underclass, but learns that he can't escape that ghost or his destiny no matter how far he runs. Into chaos and uncertainty, with the fate of the world dependent upon their choices, these two ordinary people must run and wrestle with their duties and desires in order to prevent total war from tearing civilization apart, or to prepare for its inevitable arrival.