Out of the ashes of a desperate refugee camp, a new society was born, with a new place to call home: Land. Her grandmother, Cons, has also reached a significant age - sixty-six: soon the Selection Truck will arrive to take her away forever. Christy's only hope for protection lies with her errant rebel father ...

The sea rose. Civilisation drowned. Land became our saviour. Seventeen-year-old Christy knows that life is a set of rules, and rules are inherent to survival. The rules of Land decide what colour clothes you must wear. What job you must do. How much food you can eat. Where you can live. How long you can live for. Rules are not there to be broken. Not in Land. So when an unexpected path is laid out for Christy, she quickly realises that taking it will have extreme repercussions. This new life - one of danger, that of rebel, spy, lover, and assassin - will mean choosing death.

My eyes shot back to the street as I heard shouts, unusual in Land. A small crowd was forming ahead, blocking any view of Cons, a Black-clad State Trooper hollering, 'This is what Land's traitors look like; come see!' indicating the wall to his left as if he were calling an audience to a show. Between a gap in the growing throng, I spied five scared looking young men, stripped down to their underpants; winter's cold turning their skeletal frames blue; shivering, cowering like animals awaiting the slaughterhouse. My eyes locked on one. I recognised him from Kara's block: soft brown hair and a pinched but gentle face. He wasn't more than twenty. My gut twisted in fear for him, but I couldn't stay and watch. I surged forwards, but more people got in my way, citizens assembling to prove themselves loyal. Combined voices began raining out like ammunition at the bowed heads of the boys: 'Land won't carry you!' 'Your kind will bring us all down!' 'Destroy all Resistance!' My breathing hurried, I elbowed a path through Grey and Green and Brown-clothed bodies. Stay silent. Fix a smile. Keep on walking. I just hoped desperately the gory spectacle would have dispersed by the time Kara passed on her way to the Institute. Arrests like these, they were few and far between; mostly kept out of sight. To do it in public must have meant the Troopers wanted to send out a warning to would-be traitors. Which Kara was fast risking becoming. Lately, she was burning to retaliate, to risk trouble - to pay back the State for removing both her parents for Selection, her father when she was twelve, her mother two years later. My job: to stop her. Always. I was nearly through when the crowd bunched and pushed me to one side. 'Get off him!' I watched a middle-aged woman in Brown with lank dark hair careering into the furthest State Trooper, her arms out. 'Leave my boy alone!' I turned my head away - it was inevitable what was to come. I kept my focus on the road ahead as I heard the slam of a body onto hard concrete, a crunch of steel-clad heel on bone. I pushed on, creating distance as fast as I could from the woman's flailing shrieks; from the shouts of one of the boys, suddenly silenced by the pop of a gun. I rubbed at my eyes. What difference could I have made? Say nothing. Do nothing. It sat there as comfortably in my psyche as wake up and eat. Survival, wasn't it? I clenched my fists tight, gritting my teeth. No - it was about protecting the ones I loved. Kara. And Cons.