In another where the USA has split along party lines, Agent Matt Tennimore’s job is to get people out of the Confederated Red States, whether they’re captured special ops agents from his own country or gay CRS citizens who’ve petitioned for asylum. He under no circumstances expected to have to retrieve his senior high school crush, aka the guy who ostracized him to be gay.

Rescuing Wayne Ayala isn’t likely to become easy: he’s crawling with monitoring nanos and includes a cybernetic brain implant that’s granted him psychic force he isn’t sure how to control. That is the good news. The bad? The implant is compromising James’s mental stability.

So they’re on the run, avoiding monitoring by AI airplane and hiding from enemy militia. Then James confesses he tormented Matt in high school because James wished him. Matt can’t resist the temptation Adam gives, but he desires a lot more than sex, presuming they ever make it house alive. Is Adam really a good bet when he’s got a ticking time bomb in his human brain and there’s the issue of just how much he’s actually changed?