Drought had come to the 21st century, and the land was dying. Crops failed, refugee camps overflowed, and riots raged across the country--and the Army Corps of Engineers had the dirty job of rationing hat little water was left.

Carter Voltaire, a Corps officer in charge of the Columbia Riverbed Pipeline, had orders to stop a group of desperate farmer sabotaging the Pipe--at any cost. Nita Montoya, a Drylands woman burdened with a strange mental talent, knew the farmers were being framed. She could help Carter expose the real saboteurs--but only by exposing her own abnormal ability.

In the Drylands, the few people strangely altered by the drought were feared and persecuted if their mutations came to light. But if Nita couldn't trust Carter with her secret, there was no way to stop the wave of violence that would sweep their lives away...