In a post-American world, where an oppressive global government blankets all of humanity, the entire prison system has been dismissed in favor of an ungoverned region of forced exile. Caustically, it is named the State of Refuge. Amidst violence and anarchy, the convicts within must fend for themselves if they hope to survive. When seventeen-year-old Derek Vaskez is wrongly sentenced there, he finds himself caught up in a conspiracy much larger than he could ever imagine. He alone possesses something that many ruthless people are searching for and would kill to obtain—something so valuable that it could change the entire world as he knows it.