At the end of the twenty-first century--in a transformed America--the sons of convicted felons are tested for a set of genetic markers. Boys who test positive become compulsory wards of the state--removed from their homes and raised on "Goodhouse" campuses, where they learn to reform their darkest thoughts and impulses. James, a transfer student who watched as a radical religious group set fire to his old Goodhouse and killed nearly everyone he'd ever known, must adjust to a new campus with new rules and contend with Bethany, a brilliant, medically fragile girl who wants to save him, and with her father, the school's sinister director of medical studies. Soon, however, James realizes that the biggest threat might already be there, inside the fortified walls of Goodhouse itself.