In New York, a body has been found, its face and fingerprints removed, a coin-sized circle carved into its thigh. On an island off the Southeastern coast, a young man is running from a place he cannot survive, toward another he cannot comprehend. And in Manhattan, another young man is moving closer to an encounter that will alter everything he has ever believed about himself.For thirty years, a colony with its own laws and values has been growing. Covertly supplied with the latest technology and DNA materials, its leaders carefully monitor their human trials and conceal them from the outside world. Now someone has escaped. When Jude finds a ragged stranger who calls himself Skyler cowering in his hallway, he is shocked to see they share the same face.Now Jude and Skyler are running together, hunted by unknown pursuers as they search for the mystery of their birth.

They flee across the country, survivors of an experiment that has gone tragically wrong.