Kestrel Evans hates Mondays. Mostly because she's disappointed in her job. She studied literature and language but she's working at a spaceport, selling guns and supplies to galactic tourists. A deafening crash comes from her back room. An eight-foot cylinder appears out of nowhere and flattens all the boxes-and out of it steps a young man in a leather jacket, toting some sort of long, sawed-off gun. And he's smoking a cigarette. Which is EXTREMELY illegal. All at once, Kestrel's life spirals out of control. Jack Wolfe, this sharp, scarred, irascible stranger, demands Kestrel's help in finding William Jakiv, a scientist whose methods are as famous as they are morally questionable. And when Kestrel's family enters Jakiv's crosshairs, Kestrel has no choice. It's now an interstellar race. Kestrel and Jack are pitted against hired mercenaries, disease, mechanical soldiers and inner demons, and along the way, Kestrel begins to suspect that Jack Wolfe may be an integral part of a dangerous and galactically-forbidden time-travel project: The Paradox Initiative.