Life in the Enclave is hard and brutal. A life lived in squalor, the decrepit block houses cramped and unsanitary, the people slowly starving; each day is nothing less than a fight for survival. Sarah thought she understood. She is Drose, tattooed with the Stigma Servitude. Her short life already mapped out and beyond her control. She is destined to finish her days on the labour battalions or at the hands of the 'zombie' Stigmata Guards. When her Grappa receives a package from the Plush black marketeer Drohodo, Sarah discovers that her life is not as simple as she first thought. Now, with only a few days left before she is made Legitimate, she must discover the truth about her confinement. What is so important inside the crumpled brown paper package that so many are willing to die for it? Who is the boy from outside the walls, who talks about Governors and life in the Green? Why are her people so despised? And what of the whispers of another city, outside the Enclave, a place where freedom exists.