Zinhle is a high school senior living in a near-future dystopian society. The last remaining humans live in a small society enclosed by "the Firewall," a remnant from "the war," which the humans lost, designed to keep out "the enemy." Zinhle doesn't know who or what the enemy is, just that they are not human. Since the negotiation of a peace treaty, the enemy has grown more powerful while the firewall's technology has not improved. The humans, Zinhle thinks, are essentially slaves to the enemy, trapped within the firewall. Each year, the humans send the enemy the lowest 10% of their graduating class of high school seniors, as well as the single valedictorian. These teenagers are never seen again. Zinhle figures the lowest 10%--"the cull"--is taken as a way of curating the gene pool of the near-extinct human race; however, she doesn't understand what use the enemy has with the valedictorian. One morning, Zinhle's mother asks if she's considered getting pregnant, suggesting someone who could impregnate her. Zinhle firmly declines. Later, it becomes evident that her mother was suggesting this as a way to avoid Zinhle being taken away by the enemy. Zinhle excels in school and confronts her teachers when they're wrong. Very few people like her. Some of the other students, led by a girl named Samantha, insult her family and frequently beat her up. Her only friend, Mitra, asks her if she has to make all the other students look so bad. One day, after Zinhle aces a post-graduate placement exam, one of her teachers warns her that a representative is coming from beyond the Firewall to meet her. When Zinhle meets with the representative, she is surprised by how human he looks. He tells her that he is part-human part-artificial intelligence, as is everyone beyond the Firewall. He explains how the AI originally blended with humans on accident, with some poor school children using an ancient library computer, without the necessary protections to keep the AI out of their minds. As the AI fused into more and more people in poor communities, the Firewalls were originally built to contain it--nobody cared about the people who were affected. As those people merged with the AI and the AI spread, those who were originally outside the Firewalls consolidated and hid inside, unwilling to adapt or change. He reveals that those given away to the outside are invited to join them--to merge their bodies and souls into the collective AI network. He tells Zinhle: “Good grades reflect your ability to adapt to a complex system. We are a system.” He also tells her humankind can live alongside them without joining them when they become unwilling to give their children away and show they can live in harmony "without more segregation and killing." Throughout the conversation, Zinhle begins thinking of not just the AI, but also her own society, as "them." She has never been able to fit in. The AI man tells her he's intervening because many valedictorians lose resolve and deliberately fail near the end of their senior years; he wants her to continue to succeed. She realizes her determination to stay herself, to not assimilate, makes the AI's intervention unnecessary. She would have continued to excel anyway.