When a catastrophic outbreak transforms a coastal city into something unrecognizable, a team of six contractors is hired by a billionaire to extract one girl ? his niece, Evelyn Wren ? from St. Brigid's Center, a residential therapeutic facility on a sea-locked island. The job was clean on paper. It stopped being clean the moment the ramp dropped.

Evelyn is sixteen, autistic, and sees everything. She is precise where others are panicked, direct where others perform, and she has already done the math the contractors haven't let themselves do yet: there are twelve children at St. Brigid's, and the boat won't be back for six hours.

The contract said bring back one girl. The girl has other ideas.

Now, a team built for extraction faces a choice no contract covers ? and the dead are not the only thing closing in.

Six contractors. Twelve autistic children. One island. No margin.