California, 2042. They used to say a big quake would sink the state into the Pacific Ocean. It didn’t. Although the shaking caused enough structural damage to crumble entire cities to the point of no return. What wasn’t damaged by the quake and its subsequent aftershocks was further laid to waste by The Takeover of 2025.

Today, only one city stands. Gollivud. Or, the Gull, to the just over twelve hundred people living there.

Formerly known as Downtown Los Angeles, the two-mile area was a breeding ground for turmoil. Fights over housing and food threatened to tear the city down faster than the quake and the war combined.

That’s when the walls went up and the Obedience Project began.

For fifteen-year-old Xander Slater, life in the Gull has been fairly mundane, until a series of events throws his ordinary life into utter chaos, forcing him to seek what’s hiding beneath the surface. What he finds will change everything. For better or worse.

The Divergent Series meets The Matrix in this story about finding out who you are in a world that might not be what you think it was.