"I am a synth. It's a word that's wielded like a baton. Sometimes, they call us betas or prototypes. Or rabbits, for those who like their cruelty to have a more clever bent. It's also a dangerous word. When you get down to the bones of it, I am someone else's creation. A made thing. And a made thing is an owned thing." The only things that Eve, a genetically-engineered girl, knows about her world is what she is told by the Pureline scientists who created her and what she can glean from stolen glimpses at data screens and from a closely-guarded hive of information called Alpha. Through whispers from other "synths" she has learned her time is almost up. Synths are property. They are useful only up to adulthood, while the traits produced by their modified genetic codes are still being explored and cataloged. Now already past eighteen, she is scheduled for termination. In order to live, she must find a way to escape the Pureline Tower and survive in the wasteland that has been left of the world.