With nothing but a map and a rickety solar truck, Jax journeys to a top-secret government facility at Lake Jindabyne—one of the few freshwater lakes left in Australia. Outraged by the injustice of these people having excess water while his family suffers from dehydration, Jax hatches a plan. At first he starts small—stealing just enough water to ease the parched tongues back home—but with each trip the risks he takes become greater. It is only a matter of time before he gets caught. And the penalty for hydro-theft is death.

500 years after the Rise... The last remaining humans have become numans, dangerously enslaved by a virtual world called the BigDry. Wall Manager Macie is an 'incompatible, ' unable to assimilate with numan technology due to a disability. As a lowly human, her job is to patch the cracks in the wall that encircles DarwinTwo, protecting the city from the encroaching sea water. When numans embark on a dangerous step which will change mankind forever, Macie's job becomes obsolete. There is no room in DarwinTwo for those who don't fit in. But perhaps that's exactly what numanity needs.