Summary

Chapter 1 – It is late summer, 2035, in the Bronx, New York. Sixteen year-old Dahlia Grillo and her family bury Aunt Maria, who has died at the young age of thirty-eight, in Van Cortlandt Park, where the dead are disposed of with biocremation. Uncle Ernesto and Dahlia take the death hard. Maria had acted as a mother to Dahlia after Dahlia’s own mother had died years before. After the cremation, Dahlia wanders around, aware she may run into Nazi stormtrooper-like-thugs called Sturmers, mercenaries who sell out to the highest bidder. She then decides to head home to Fox Street. She is depressed not only because of the funeral, but because of life in general.

Life in general is dictated by the Central Eight, or C-8 companies, who control everything in the world including food production. World society has been reorganized into classes of people...