It’s the Summer of 2146, and the citizens of the politically unsteady North American Empire go about their lives in quiet monotony. Everyone and every thing has a place and a purpose –– whether they choose to embrace it, or not.
For seventeen-year-old Poppy Novak, that purpose is bleak and unclear. Locked into an involuntary, and indefinite Contract, she serves her barbarous adoptive family and the residents of their bustling Inn. The freedom she longs for is comprised of simple things: wear pretty clothes, become an artist, have a home to call her own, marry June Darys, and search for anything that can tell her something about the family and identity she lost long ago. Unable to recall anything before her mysterious arrival at the Inn eleven years ago, the only clues to her previous life are scattered flashbacks and ominous dreams.
Unwittingly, Poppy finds herself swept up into a daunting whirlwind of politics, possibility, splendor, danger, and ultimately self discovery, when a pair of nomadic revolutionaries, brimming with information about her past, enter her life seemingly out of nowhere. Poppy makes a break for it, and quickly discovers that she’s far more than the nobody from nowhere she was raised to believe. Thrust into the national spotlight, the newfound companions must thwart foes masquerading as friends, the perilous world beyond the shelter of the Factions, and ultimately, the dire strings attached to Poppy’s true self. Unfortunately for them, unraveling their intertwined histories, and navigating the uproarious world of the 22nd century will prove to have serious repercussions, when they discover that they are all at the core of perhaps the most heavily guarded secret in the Empire; and, that the fate of the Empire itself lies dormant within the mind of the long-lost heir of the decimated Faction of Rosehaven, waiting to be awakened to help right a great wrong.