When the half-drowned stranger washed up on the beach near research scientist Samantha Bryton's home, she was unaware that he was something more than human: an experiment conducted by Charon, a practitioner of illegal robotics and android research. The man said his name was Turner Pascal - but Pascal was dead, killed in a car wreck. Samantha and Turner quickly found themselves on the run, pursued by the most ruthless criminal of the twenty - first century. In desperation, Samantha sought help from Sunrise Alley, an underground organization of Als and androids gone rogue. But those cybernetic outlaws had their own hidden agenda, and Samantha feared that her only hope would prove a forlorn one....