Sasha Sangare, a snarky teenage boy who has recently had his heart broken, is a sophomore at the Institute, a high school on one of Mars' moons for exceptionally intelligent students. The school was founded by the Armed Forces of the Inner Planets, and the students are required to follow strict rules, including wearing tracking implants. Sasha often finds ways to break the rules, such as by stealing extra rations and plagiarizing assignments from old files in the library. He always hoped to impress Delia, his crush, but she recently moved away and supposedly has a new boyfriend. When he arrives at the classroom of his favorite professor, Thomas Tsai, Sasha and the rest of the students are met by soldiers explaining that the professor has been fired due to a research violation. The students are forced to surrender their data drives as part of the investigation, since a student is suspected to have been involved. Sasha and his friend Herb soon begin receiving anonymous messages, telling them to hide. Sasha leads Herb to his usual hiding spot, a frozen storage unit where he recently hid extra samples for his project. Once there, however, they are met by the corporal, who explains that he found Sasha's hiding spot and fired Professor Tsai when he tried to cover it up. The corporal threatens to kill the boys, but he decides to leave them locked in the frozen chamber instead. Now locked inside and shivering, Sasha reveals the extent of his project to his friend. Sasha has discovered how to fuse nano-machines with human chromosomes in order to enhance the cybernetic implants that allow them to survive in space. The project was risky because Sasha was forced to test it on himself, but because of it, he is now able to shoot a beam of energy to destroy the door along with his tracking implant. Once they have escaped, Sasha and Herb continue to run and hide from the soldiers, following the instructions of the mysterious messages. They are directed to a hangar, where they find a shuttle about to take off. Hurrying onto the shuttle with this soldiers dangerously close behind them, they see Professor Tsai in the pilot seat, who admits to sending them the messages. The shuttle takes off for The Academy at Europa, where Professor Tsai has colleagues who can help them. As they begin the two week long journey, all Sasha can think about is his crush, Delia, who recently moved to Europa.