Eighteen-year-old Laina Hughes is walking home from a basketball game when she witnesses something extraterrestrial—and without warning, she is abducted and stranded in space. Her captors, the Oneemi, refuse to send her back to Earth, insisting she has seen too much. Trapped aboard the space station known as The Settler, Laina faces isolation, dislike toward humans, and the terrifying possibility that she may never return home.

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Determined not to waste away in captivity, Laina searches for any path back to Earth, despite having no allies, resources, or skills that translate to life among alien species. As she navigates the Settler’s bureaucracy, she discovers that her abduction is tied to far more than chance.

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Meanwhile, Kairos Vita has just ascended as one of the youngest leaders of his nation, Crescendo, on the planet Mes. Hoping to guide his people away from their violent past, Kairos instead finds himself confronting a political crisis: criminals from Crescendo have been caught with a human abductee. The Oneemi—long resentful of Crescendo’s history of warfare and colonization—are eager to use the incident as justification for punishment.

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As Laina and Kairos cross paths, they uncover the true reason for her abduction and the role Earth now plays in a widening interstellar power struggle. With rival nations vying for dominance and old grudges threatening open conflict, both Earth and Crescendo are placed in grave danger. Forced into an alliance, Laina and Kairos must navigate political corruption and escalating violence in order to protect their homes—and decide how much they are willing to sacrifice to do so.