Ask Not What Your Country Could Do For You. Ask What It Could Do To You. John Cruise—better known as the superpowered delta Patriot—only wanted to serve his country, which has suffered under martial law since the assassination of the First Lady back in 1963. For years, he did so as a member of Delta Prime, the federal paramilitary organization dedicated to keeping deltas and the rest of the population in line. Then, during the Bicentennial Battle, Chicago disappeared in a blinding flash of light, taking the world’s most powerful deltas with it, along with Patriot’s wife. Today, in 1999, Patriot leads a group of rebel deltas known as the Defiancé, all of whom are on the run from Delta Prime. He hopes to find a way to break scores of their imprisoned friends out of New Alcatraz, the only place on the planet strong enough to hold them all. But then, while rescuing college student Lisa Stanski from a pack of Primers, the unthinkable happens. Patriot gets caught. Now it’s up to the rest of the Defiancé, including Lisa, to figure out how to break Patriot out of New Alcatraz before his old pal Ragnarok, now the leader of Delta Prime, has him executed without trial, under the direct orders of President John F. Kennedy himself.

The Truth Is Finally Revealed In the aftermath of the mass breakout of superpowered deltas from New Alcatraz, fear and chaos grips the United States. Patriot—the leader of the rebellion known as the Defiancé — and his friends Street, Lisa, and Charge work tirelessly to help the people in their organization’s swollen ranks. When a madman attacks a family of rogue deltas hiding in the Front Range of the Colorado Rockies, Patriot and his friends rush to their rescue. What they find when they arrive forces them to grab the family and race to Denver, where they wind up in a standoff against Delta Prime, the government agency of superpowered soldiers determined to crush their rising resistance. In the course of this, the second book of Matt Forbeck’s Brave New World trilogy, the heroes of the Defiancé learn more of the truth about the disappearance of the city of Chicago back in 1976, and what they discover will change the world forever.

Patriot and his closest friends in the Defiancé flee the United States for the warmer and safer climes of Isla Delta, the world’s only nation in which the majority of the citizens are refugees with powers. Unfortunately, President Kennedy—still in office after decades of martial law—seems determined to not let them enjoy any respite and sends the US military to invade. With many of his friends captured and even shot, Patriot must find a way to sneak back into the USA and break them out of where they’ve been imprisoned in Crescent City. Meanwhile, those same friends managed to make contact with the long-missing city of Chicago, believed to have been destroyed back in 1976. At the same time, the greatest villain the world has ever known has returned with a new plan to make the world his. If Patriot and the others fail to stop him, he will destroy everything within a hundred miles of Crescent City and wipe every living delta from the face of the planet.