The year is 2020, and the United States is in the midst of a depression. Tessa Sharp, the heroine, and her father have invented a battery that just might be the key to lifting the country out of the economic tailspin that has left chaos in its wake. She learns quickly that not everyone welcomes the invention, when her father is killed and the battery prototype is stolen. The police, overwhelmed with a sky-high crime rate and having lost half their force to cutbacks, will do nothing. So she runs to the only person she knows who may be able to help. Tessa had known Kevin Idle growing up. No one she knew was more gifted, but no one she knew was more useless either. He'd become a stereotypical loser in high school: stoner, smoker, petty thief; a boy with an A plus brain and a C minus average. He'd got into serious trouble with the law and was sent to military school by his father. He ended up joining the Navy and becoming a SEAL, but was expelled for smoking weed. He reluctantly takes on the role of Tessa's protector, reluctantly because he has gangs of killers after him, as well. The two go on the run, and are constantly beset by assassination attempts as they try to determine who is after her, and look for a way to reproduce the battery prototype. Will they survive long enough to bring the critical new technology to fruition?