€œRedefines €˜unputdownable.€€ €"Amie Kaufman, New York Times bestselling author of Iluminae €œI was thrilled. I was shocked.€ €"NPR €œStunning twists and turns.€ €"BCCB (starred review)
In this gripping debut novel, seventeen-year-old Cat must use her gene-hacking skills to decode her late father€s message concealing a vaccine to a horrifying plague.
Catarina Agatta is a hacker. She can cripple mainframes and crash through firewalls, but that€s not what makes her special. In Cat€s world, people are implanted with technology to recode their DNA, allowing them to change their bodies in any way they want. And Cat happens to be a gene-hacking genius.
That€s no surprise, since Cat€s father is Dr. Lachlan Agatta, a legendary geneticist who may be the last hope for defeating a plague that has brought humanity to the brink of extinction. But during the outbreak, Lachlan was kidnapped by a shadowy organization called Cartaxus, leaving Cat to survive the last two years on her own.
When a Cartaxus soldier, Cole, arrives with news that her father has been killed, Cat€s instincts tell her it€s just another Cartaxus lie. But Cole also brings a message: before Lachlan died, he managed to create a vaccine, and Cole needs Cat€s help to release it and save the human race.
Now Cat must decide who she can trust: The soldier with secrets of his own? The father who made her promise to hide from Cartaxus at all costs? In a world where nature itself can be rewritten, how much can she even trust herself?