In a world where the incubation of men is banned, a brilliant, empathetic scientist rescues an illegal man from his sadistic owner, launching a power struggle between the status quo and the agents of change.

One hundred and fifty years after the incubation of men was banned, Eleanora Duncan stumbles on a shocking secret. A Colony of lower-caste women are incubating baby boys for sale. Owning a man is the ultimate secret status symbol for the rich and powerful but also against the law, a law the elites support for ordinary members of society while exempting themselves. The Colony now has fully grown men ready to be auctioned off to the highest bidder.

When Eleanora discovers that a man she bonded with at the Colony is suffering abuse by her owner, she comes to his aid, and spirits him to a journalist friend's mountain home several states away. Her intent is to expose the hypocrisy of the elites. When their plan backfires, her journalist friend is arrested, and she and the man are pursued by the Federal Police, igniting a power struggle that could bring down the government, and launch a civil war.

Will men once again be permitted to live openly with women, or will they be relegated to the near oblivion and slavery that awaits them in the shadows?