Chapter 1:
Seth, Petra, and Anaya are all at Deadman's island (a Canadian military base) with their parents and a platoon of Canadian troops led by Colonel Pearson, as they’re waiting outside of the base watching and waiting for the herbicide for the cryptogenic plants to take action shortly after the events of book 1. They’re amazed as they watch the black plants crumble but as they’re watching a familiar rain storm accored. It rains hard similar to when the seeds fell, weeks before, but this time it brings eggs, the eggs of alien insects being 3 types; a giant mosquito-like creature that carries a deadly disease; a giant worm that with its destructive appetite eats through everything like metal and concrete; and a swimmer type that hatches underwater into large waterstriders. the scientists on Deadman's island immediately take samples of these eggs and watch their aggressive behavior, but as they’re studying the Canadian military and intelligence agencies barge into the lab coming to arrest the three hybrids because of suspicion, Dr. Sumner (Petra’s father) suggests cutting off Seth's feathers where Seth responds with anger before he, Anaya, and Petra, are all tasered handcuffed before being taken from their parents to a military prison.
Chapter 2:
About a day after the Kids were arrested we see Petra’s experience in her cell. Since the guards never answered her questions and she had no way to tell time she started haunting time with the meals, suddenly a group of guards came to her cell door and they blindfolded and handcuffed her to bring her to interrogation, at the interrogation Dr. Weber (Seth’s foster mom and Canadian intelligence), an American character named Dr. Ritter, and Colonel Pearson are there to question her. Through MRI scans they were able to find an alien-like transmitter in her brain and they accuse her of communicating with and helping the cryptogens, she denies this because she has never made contact with them but the scientists don’t believe her, afterward they take her back to her cell.
Chapter 3:
Shortly after Petra’s interrogation, it’s Seth’s turn, but this time ritter seems to be much more aggressive with Seth in the interrogation room, and after doing the same as he did with Petra, showing the MRI scans and accusing him of communicating with the cryptogenic. Dr. Ritter gets even angrier when Seth argues that he has no idea about these signals in his sleep. But Dr. Ritter claims that they have been sending signals to them since he was born and that it would “determine earth’s environment and habitability” for the cryptogenic. Near the end of the chapter, Colonel Pearson says “We have no idea what kind of information is flowing between them, or what kind of threat they pose, they need to be transferred immediately to a secure location“ After that, Dr. Weber is in disbelief that they would be taking Seth, Anaya, and Petra somewhere “secure” and when Dr. Weber argues about their human rights Dr. Ritter makes a famous quote: “these hybrids have less human DNA than a banana. If a banana isn’t a human, neither are these kids and if they’re not human, how can they have human rights?”
Chapter 4-5:
Seth, Anaya, and Petra are deported to a new bunker somewhere south of the US-Canadian border. When they enter the bunker they are greeted by a facility that’s better than expected; a massive gymnasium with specialized exercises for different hybrids; a cafeteria that serves unexpectedly great food; dormitories that have nice bathrooms and beds; and a lab where the “whitecoats” do their work studying the hybrids. When they first enter the bunker they are immediately greeted by head guard Paul who shows them around and gives them various benchmark tests like breath holding for the swimmers, speed for the runners, and various materials to slice with the flyer’s feathers. When they enter the bunker they see tonnes of other hybrids like them including Darren (a swimmer) and Charles (a runner) who had been some of the first people to arrive at the bunker Charles had said “When we first arrived they were still screwing in the light bulbs.”
Chapter 6:
Anaya, Petra, and Seth are all in their dorms at night. While lying down Anaya and Petra speak quietly with each other about random things. But they recently got news that the cryptogenic spaceship was located and that the us government would be firing Nuclear Missiles at this ship. The next morning while eating breakfast the small group of kids are talking when one of them brings up: “Hey if these cryptogenic can use telepathy to talk to us, why can’t we?” after many tries, Seth then sends a message to Petra saying these gluten-free pancakes are gross. With this news, they figure out that when someone starts messaging you you see a flash of a certain light color and a distinct smell. for the time being, they decide to keep it secret and just between them.
Chapter 7:
Dr. Ritter and his group of scientists call all of the hybrids into the gym where Ritter announces: “I know that all of you have been wondering what is happening on the surface so as a gift we will update you ”Ritter wheels out a box TV and shows them a live satellite video of the ship, it is described as looking like a giant rose flower and each petal is said to be the length of 2 cruise ships. On the live video, you can see an American nuclear rocket aimed at the ship, the nuke is a direct hit and after the debris clears up, the ship is completely unharmed, all the debris was from the rocket.
Chapter 8:
After the hybrids had been shown the video while they were walking back they discussed the video they had seen. Petra was devastated that the nuke did nothing but Anaya was fine with it. Later that night while they were talking Anaya suddenly got a message from a cryptogenic, this time it was different because she had been shown a vision of what the home planet was like: greens and blues just like Earth, forests and farms of the black grass, machines that the runners use to harvest the plants, great cities that are exclusive to each species; the runners have streets with houses, the swimmers have great underwater palaces, and the flyers have giant mountain-top cities that look like metal nests and houses that look like eggs. The runners look like brown-furred mammals while the swimmers look like graceful reptilian dolphins and the flyers look like colorful birds. But after that the vision shows the flyers invading the Runners, the runners try to defend themselves by jumping on them but the flyers have an extremely powerful weapon that uses sound that can flatten a building with one strike, the flyers then invade the swimmers who try to defend with a bow and arrow like weapon but are unsuccessful in the defense, after that it shows a vision of the swimmers and runners being loaded into the giant rose petal ships with the flyers as guards, the ships then speed away towards earth.
Chapter 9:
When Anaya wakes up and goes out for breakfast in the morning. But she is surprised to see a big table with a sign that says “Happy 16th birthday!” Anaya after breakfast and morning exercise the cryptogenic gather around the table, and they start celebrating, eating, talking, and having a good time. After everyone had finished, Ritter came out to announce great news to all the hybrids; he was going to to try and make them look normal again: Runners would get claws filed and hair shaved off, swimmers would get tails cut off and scale will experiment with laser scale-pattern removal, and the flyers would get feathers clipped. After the announcement, it’s back to exercises. While Petra is exercising on a bike Darren comes over and starts telling her about how he discovered the telepathy and gradually gets more annoying and starts acting creepy until Petra yells at him to stop which makes Seth walk over to defend her. Darren is not having it and starts picking a fight with Seth saying that he isn’t lifting enough. After showing him how much he can lift he humiliates Darren when he isn’t able to lift as much as Seth. Darren who is obviously annoyed by this gets angered as Seth is walking away and he shoves Seth’s head into a barbell after Seth isn’t able to defend himself, Darren grabs a barbell and slams it onto Seth’s arm, breaking it. But while Darren continues punching Seth he suddenly stops and clutches his temple feeling the worst pain in his life, shortly after the guards come and handcuff him yelling at Seth “What did you do to me? You freak!”
Chapter 10:
At the start of the chapter, Petra watches Darren come in from the hallway doors and fall in with everyone in the gym. Petra kept asking him so many questions like “Where is Seth?” and “Why isn’t Seth with you?” but Darren didn't have the answers to those questions. He tried to apologize for his behavior that started the fight but Petra wasn’t having it the only thing she wanted to know was if Seth was okay. After that, Ritter came out to announce he was running another test and was taking volunteers. Anaya was one of them and Ritter brought them all down for his test. But when they got there, it was unexpected; the hybrids were locked in a vault where inside were the giant dragonflies nicknamed “mosquito-birds” and were rumored to carry a deadly virus with a high mortality rate. All of the hybrids ended up being bitten by them and stayed in the vault for quarantine.
Meanwhile, in Ritter’s office, Seth woke up blindfolded and tied to a chair, the blindfold was a hood made of a material that would black radio waves meaning he couldn’t use telepathy. Ritter announced to him that he would be removing a part of him for studies when Seth said “You can’t remove my feathers!” Ritter responded with “Oh it won’t be your feathers I’ll remove.“
Chapter 11:
The next morning Petra was all alone in the cafeteria, Seth was still gone and Anaya with the experiment volunteers had been taken last night and the room was quiet. All of a sudden Anaya, alongside the other hybrid volunteers, walked through the door. Petra was obviously ecstatic about this but Anaya assured her to be serious. After explaining what Ritter did in the experiment anaya brought up another tropic; escape.
The plan for the escape was that Darren and Esta would go to the weights. Darren would lift the weights to break the casts on Esta’s arms to expose her feathers. Meanwhile, the runners were distracting the guards by jumping up and taking the ceiling tiles. After they got Esta’s casts off a guard tried to taser her but instead, they got snagged in her feathers giving them a bunch of sparks and crackles for effect before stunning the guard with the flyer sound weapon. Then together the hybrids took out all the guards throughout the cafeteria and the rest of the floor, next up was to save Seth.
Meanwhile, in the operation room, Ritter and his team of surgeons were getting ready to remove the transmitter in Seth’s brain. Seth had somehow managed to wake up when he found he was tied to his bed with a hood over it that blocked his ability to use the sound weapon and telepathy. He tried to fight back by rustling around trying to get untied but it didn’t work. He had managed to get his IV out of his wrist before they could put him under but they put it straight back in and knocked him out right away.
Chapter 12:
The army of hybrids marched onto the stairwell where they stormed up to the surgical level and found the surgical suite. When they found Seth the flyers stunned almost everyone in the room and the rest of the hybrids killed them. they freed Seth, and together Seth, Esta, Vincent, and Siena all used their flyer sound weapon on Ritter at the same time causing him to foam at the mouth, bleed from his nose and ears, and have a seizure while at the same time having his hands cuffed behind his back. Even when Anaya and Petra begged them to stop making him suffer they wouldn’t stop. they liked watching him suffer.
After the death of Ritter, they ran to the elevator and waited for the slow elevator to arrive, and when it finally got there all of the hybrids jammed into the elevator. But while Anaya was frequently pushing the “G” button the guards, this time with protective radio-wave-proof helmets and assault rifles stormed the level. They spotted the elevators and opened fire.