Kira Pallaton lies awake in her bed the night before her 18th birthday. Tomorrow she will face extensive training at Collegium, a special school where hand-picked, fresh out of high school graduates go to train in one of three fields; science, government, or assassination. Only the best students get a high enough score to go into assassination, and Kira is one of those. She will have to make tough choices; one wrong move, and she's dead.
The question is, will she make the right one?
200 people from all over the world have been kidnapped, their memories wiped and their voices gone. When they awake, they are told they must survive with not enough supplies for everyone. No one knows what is going on, only that they are taking part in some sort of experiment.