Overview

No truth can be hidden for long. In fact, the longer it hides, the more powerful it becomes... For Derek Gao, the days are blurs and his recent past is foggy. He knows he failed to earn high scores on the Endurance Test. He knows his mother died. But he has no memory of either. All he is doing is what he has always done with his life-sweeping streets as a dreg. Even so, he cannot help but feel that something is off. What, he does not know. Only that something is wrong and it eats at him, nibbling away bit by bit. He knows if too much is eaten, everything he is will be lost. Forever. Deep beneath the Spine, Candice waits in a cell. She waits to be questioned. She waits to go mad like the only other occupant with her in the darkness of the Spine's basement. She waits and wonders and tries to put the pieces of the past together, to find truth in the stories and tear down the lies. And as pieces fall together, she fears her grandmother has set her on a path of nightmares where her only salvation lies in the dead zone and with a boy whose memory has been wiped clean.