The city was built to keep them free.
The maze was built to keep them alive.
The last free city in North America is a fortress of stacked shipping containers-steel corridors, shifting paths, and secrets welded into its walls. No one leaves. No one survives alone.
When the city is breached for the first time in generations, teens aged sixteen to nineteen are forced into a hastily formed fighting unit. Trained to run the maze, wield blades, and kill without hesitation, they're told one thing: the city must not fall.
But as battles escalate and bodies pile up, the truth begins to crack. The leaders have been lying. The maze is more than a shelter-it's a weapon. And the enemy outside may not be the real threat.
When a forbidden connection sparks between opposing sides of the war, loyalty fractures. Survival demands choices no one should have to make. Protect the city-or expose the truth that could destroy it.
Because freedom has a price.
And this time, it may cost the last of humanity.