In the Green, Khlyen carries a wounded Dutch to a shelter and tells a story to heal her while Aneela stands guard. The story details how Dutch and Johnny transported goods to the Quad but were arrested for smuggling and their goods are impounded. They discover they were being used as mules to allow an assassin to steal a smuggled vial of poison which has been previously impounded. Dutch strikes a deal with a RAC agent to free Johnny if they find the poison and the assassin who wants to use it. T
Johnny, D'Avin, and Delle Sayeh Kendry crash land the elevator on a planet where people's organs are harvested and regrown. Johnny gets hurt in an altercation and nearly dies. Kendry has a small amount of green and (with permission) turns Johnny into a Hullen. Johnny begins acting cruelly, emotionally detached, and erratic. Johnny rigs a contraption with a distress signal which Kendry installs, quickly learning that it was a trap set by Johnny to lead the organ harvesters away from him and D'Avi
Zeph, Pip, and Pree find and board Lucy, who has rebooted herself to a basic personality model. Attempts to restart Lucy initiates a lockdown and purge program. With only 20 minutes to live, Pip, Pree, and Zeph figure out Johnny's code to reboot Lucy properly. They fly Lucy strait to the crash-landed elevator. Meanwhile, Delle Sayeh Kendry has been captured by the organ harvester. Kendry tries to make a deal with the leader, but when he refuses and tries to harvest her baby, Kendry reveals his i
Aboard Lucy, Johnny is tied up and banging his head. Dutch is initially unconscious, but wakes-up and tries to figure out with Hullen Johnny why Khlyen told her the story of The Warrior and The Thief. Eventually, Zeph severs the Hullen from Johnny, and turns him back to human. Zeph is also preoccupied with Delle Sayeh Kendry, who has gone into labour; but the baby is growing/aging too quickly for the birth canal, and Kendry's Hullen healing powers are working too fast to cut the baby out. After
Delle Sayeh Kendry's baby continues to grow quickly, turning into a five year old, then a teenager. Pip tries to arrange a meeting with a bio expert on Utopia, but is declined. So, Team Awesome Force infiltrate the bio expert's place to kidnap him. However, he traps Johnny and Dutch in a room with a nerve agent and a super computer. Turns out the super computer is the bio expert, and Johnny tricks him into ejecting himself onto a storage device. Meanwhile, D'Avin has been injecting himself with
Kendry gives her baby a name (Ozzman Kin Rit) and a device to be used in emergencies, then leaves Lucy. Pree also leaves Lucy to rejoin his husband. Zeph finds a spider in Pip's brain, explaining his behaviour and missing memories; to keep Ozzman safe, she takes Pip onto the Black Root ship and flies away from Lucy, then experiments on his brain and the spider, ultimately finding they are inextricably linked and the death of one would mean the death of the other (and, unfortunately, the spiders
Pree rescues Gared from the Hullen occupied RAC, learning that the Hullen are draining themselves to create a Green pool for The Lady. Johnny and Dutch follow the pulsar to a hidden planet, where Dutch meets Aneela's mother (Yelena) who holds a substance that can kill Aneela's Green. 250 years earlier, Khlyen brought Yelena to that planet, in order to destroy the Green, but Yelena made him stop, and to promise to find a way to save Aneela without killing her. Yelena agreed to remain on the plane
Dutch and Johnny receive word that D'Avin and Jaq are on Tellan (Johnny and D'Avin's home planet). Johnny catches-up with his father (Marris), D'Avin and Jaq in the family bunker. The four men wait out a silica storm together, as Hullen attack. Marris is captured. An old friend of Johnny's, now a sheriff, appears and takes care of Jaq while Johnny and D'Avin mount a rescue of their father. The old friend sells them out and hands Jaq to the Hullen. The Hullen restrain the Jaqcobis. Jaq escapes by
Dutch, D'Avin, Fancy, Pree, Gared and Pip infiltrate the Hullen-controlled RAC ship and rescue the children stolen by the Hullen. Johnny keeps a bio-shield surrounding the RAC ship shutdown, so that the group can get in and out; eventually Johnny loses control, forcing a full reset to the RAC ship (giving the Hullen access to systems they were formerly locked out of, such as weapons). On the RAC-controlled Armada ship, Turin realizes that they are sitting ducks (because with the Green frozen, th
Aneela brings D'Avin and Johnny into the Green, returning them to their worst memories (Johnny: the moment Pawter Simms was killed by Delle Sayeh Kendry; D'Avin: the moment he attacked Dutch after their first time together), while Aneela listens to the plans of The Lady. Dutch, D'Avin, and Johnny pull each other out of their memories and go in search of Aneela. They meet-up with Aneela and The Lady in a memory of the Green pool Dutch saw on the hidden planet (guarded by Aneela's mother, Yelena).