Artificial life form, Shakbout Mansard just wanted a quiet, ordinary life with his family. As one of the selected few of the Bottle Born who live as free citizens, this was a reasonable ambition.

Unfortunately, Shakbout has dangerous knowledge of a plot to overthrow the government of Mengchi, making him a target for both the plotters and the security forces. At the same time the most dangerous bottle born terrorist in the systems wants Shakbout to commit a crime that will ignite a secret systems-wide war between factions of the Natural and the Bottle Born.

But even these problems are small compared to the secret that Shakbout has been hiding for a decade. Soon, he will have to take desperate measures to save those he loves... and the lives of all free bottle born lifeforms across the systems.