Artificial life form,&nbsp;Shakbout Mansard just wanted a quiet, ordinary life with his family. As one of the selected few of the Bottle Born who live as free citizens, this was a reasonable ambition.<br /><br />Unfortunately,&nbsp;Shakbout has dangerous knowledge of a plot to overthrow the government of Mengchi, making him a target for both the plotters and the security forces. At the same time the most dangerous bottle born terrorist in the systems wants Shakbout to commit a crime that will ignite a secret systems-wide war between factions of the Natural and the Bottle Born.<br /><br />But even these problems are small compared to the secret that Shakbout has been hiding for a decade. Soon, he will have to take desperate measures to save those he loves... and the lives of all free bottle born lifeforms across the systems.