Unlike most girls, Heather January had yet to outgrow her tomboy phase. Startled to find herself so quickly on the cusp of womanhood, she still desires to work with the cogs and machinery used to power her world, even though such things are forbidden to women. In choosing to rebel against a male dominated culture, she discovers a dark secret beyond imagining. When Heather becomes aware of forbidden knowledge spanning centuries, she finds herself an unwitting pawn in a much larger and horrifying secret that threatens all of civilization. Behind the access panels of a polite society, between the teeth of the gears of progress lies the path to insanity... and Heather's terrifying destiny.