Alix Principio was born with a number. A bloody number 1 etched on his chest the moment he was pulled from his mother's body.

Within the city of Nox, formerly known as New York City, an authoritarian state called One has sprung from the ashes of the deadliest plague humanity has ever seen. Every human is now born with a number etched on their chest. It painfully increases every day, the direct consequence of a rushed vaccine that saved humanity from extinction.

But Alix has an even bigger problem. His number is growing at more than twice the rate of everyone else's, a reality that threatens his very life. Desperate to slow his number growth and find answers to the larger mysteries in his family, Alix discovers a secret, black-market treatment-the only thing rumored to erase all numbers.

The only problem is that it's dangerous, irreversible, and every person who gets it is hunted by the government that criminalized it and keeps it hidden. But when faced with his demise and the lies he's been told, the treatment could be the least of Alix's fears.

Certainly it has the power to change everything he knows about being human.