A soulless monster, bred and cultivated as a weapon, must stop a cosmic disaster before she loses the girl she loves.

Shade is a monster with false memories of a life she never lived and desperately longs for. Shade was created to fight the beasts climbing through the breaches in their world. After a mission, Shade sneaks away for a taste of the freedom she had as ’Em’. But then Shade’s childhood friend/girl she was secretly in love with, Harper, finds her. Remembers hers. Turns out the memory implantations were done to more than just her.

To prevent drawing attention to their organization, the Facility allows them to contact each other with the goal of making Harper hate Shade. She can’t do it and instead meets Harper a second and third time, their friendship repairing from the memories’ argument intended to cut Shade off from the humanity they gave her. 

When Harper confesses that she likes her, Shade is thrilled and horrified. And that increases the number of lies she needs to ‘become’ Em. Meanwhile, the amount of breaches is growing and they’re affecting Shade and her siblings, the scents making them more aggressive. Shade’s handler already hates her, and her loss of control during a fight doesn’t help. 

Shade’s relationship, aside from the lying, with Harper is going well until Harper stumbles across Shade and a beast. The Facility drags Harper to their headquarters and into the mess Shade has been desperate to keep her from. In spite of her inhumanity, Harper doesn’t want to break up. When Shade’s handler threatens to harm Harper, Shade kills her sending Harper fleeing. As the world crumbles, Shade must decide if the rage inside her is worth fighting, Shade or Em, and if so, is she willing to risk getting locked in another dimension to save her own.