A war began when melting tundra uncovered an early species of horse and a flock of seabirds as old as humankind. The world forever changed and many of humankind didn't survive, but it enabled powerful AI to find a place in the world for the Androids and Robodogs to take over. While Jenna and Maddie survived the Earth's Holocene Extinction Event, strange men now watched them. Living in a never-ending drought, Jenna gets caught up in a high-tech war she doesn't understand. She yearns to complete her studies and travel to Mars, to begin a new life with Maddie. Yet a sense of unease lingers. Only when these strange men at the National Institute of Science main gates, the Watchers, enter the Institute during a crisis, does Jenna discover her privileged position. She strives to discover why this is so. But when a powerful bomb explodes, Jenna is driven by survival and forced to place her trust in the strange Watchers if she and Maddie are to survive and ultimately learn what it is to be Metamorphic.