Summary:

In a post World War III society, our nation has found itself stuck in a never-changing world. After The Realization Act, a mandatory vaccine, no one dreams, and the human mind spends its days suffocating in ignorance. But the nightmares come when you least expect it. One night everything is still, until the pent up energy that has been forced to suppress in your mind can’t handle it anymore, and you are thrust into your own nightmare. A nightmare so powerful it becomes a reality, where only the strong prevail. A nightmare where you either adapt an ability to escape and awaken among The Marked, or you simply don’t wake at all.

Alice is a survivor. She endures the hardship of being forced to leave her home and faces, what seems like, a small city full of erratic teens. Alice isn’t used to this sort of thing; parties, adaptations, or, heaven forbid, sneaking out past curfew to see her new boyfriend. But, as she is drowning in this new world, she and her friends come to find that people in the Marked Society are being murdered by a man who can become anyone he wishes. They never know where or who he is, and they don’t they are all the same person until he poses as James, the most precious person in Alice’s life, and kills Peirce’s father. Alice never thought she would ever see someone’s life bleed out on the floor below her. The cool drops that would fall from her blistering eyes. She had always believed in clean slates, but as she watched, blood drying on her shaking hands, she knew that she would never be able to wash the crimson away.