In which we return after six months to a Fairgrounds both very different, and somehow much the same. Life under the Fugulnari Occupation has become a nightmare of new restrictions and bureaucracy, but somehow the Human Exchange Concourse remains running in the same dilapidated way it always has. As Torianna, Frall, and Althaar attempt to thwart the Fugulnari through diplomatic means, Stella Reyes's Resistance fights them on the ground. And John B, caught in the middle as a secret double-agent, must seek out information to help the Resistance while being publicly hated as a Fugulnari collaborator. And how is Dee sneaking her recordings of protest songs out of her cell in solitary confinement?