Seventeen years ago, the brown rain started falling without explanation, without excuse. It killed everything it touched. Then, after four years of death and destruction, it stopped just as inexplicably. Now Alyssa and Kyra, two young women from a surviving community, are sent out into a desolate world to look for other survivors. Between Alyssa's unique power and Kyra's roguish skills, they might just succeed. But what they end up finding in the outside world, despite its veneer of civility, may be slightly less human than they had been expecting.