Dez is a flesher. She scrapes a living with her brother Bo and her mother Bel in the banns outside Newport City, the only habitable place left on a planet devastated by environmental catastrophe.All fleshers are different, but Dez is more different than most. She's a living quantum computer, able to hack into any network. For years her family has kept Dez's abilities secret, but when she accidentally kills a cop during a routine raid everything begins to unravel. Now she's broken into Newport City OpSec and discovered there's going to be a cull. Millions of people - most of the fleshers - will be exterminated.The only people who can help are a shadowy group called the Alchems and a bent cop called Brian Mac. But Dez hates Morro, the glamorous Alchem who has designs on her girlfriend, and Brian Mac is a screw up. And what chance do any of them have against the full force of OpSec?But nothing is what it seems, as Dez and her friends are plunged into the most desperate struggle of their lives...