In a world where adults recruit human kids to hunt terrorists, Never, a highly-trained soldier, hunts adult killers along with the rest of the teenagers of Special Unit 17. The product of brain programming, of mind hacking...of memory and loss of memory and reprogramming, Never fights to hold onto some semblance of who she is across different iterations of her own mind. She and the rest of Special Unit 17 work to outsmart their leash holders, the non-human "Mechs," even as they fight for them, tracking an elusive group of terrorists and their notorious leader, William ("Billy") Black before he can kill more of their own kind.