"You are hereby banished from the North American continent. Should you reenter it, you will be executed upon recognition. Within this facility, you have the right to life and to defend that life, unto your death." These are the last words spoken to the exiles banished to the Square, a massive penal colony encompassing the western triangle of what was once the state of Texas. Paxton Stephens, a disgraced and exiled scientist, gave the authoritarian Republic the wherewithal to harness antigravity, but wasn't smart enough to keep his mouth shut about its human rights abuses. He has created a small oasis for himself and a dozen other misfits on a makeshift farm near the center of the Square, under the tenuous protection of a former ranching family, far from the cannibal tribes which usually kept within sight of the Wall. The fragile balance of life and death on the farm is upset on Intake Day, when they collect a mysterious young woman who seems to have supernatural abilities. Paxton becomes convinced that Eden is the next Messiah and now his rag-tag posse must break her out of the Square so that she can save humanity from impending environmental and societal collapse.