In a future England, governed by the authoritarian Party of Order and Nation, individuals are selected at random to live in enforced poverty. The policy is called 'the Price': in order for the majority to live well, the policy states, a minority must go without. Equality is impossible.

One morning, office worker Krystan Hoad is told that he has been assigned to pay that price. As his world is turned upside down, a story of revolution unfolds through snapshots of the lives of twelve interconnected individuals: a network of dissidents called The Dream League; a robotics genius persecuted by a corrupt police officer; a mysterious agent of the resistance; a wealthy gallery owner leading a double life; a questioning civil servant at the heart of government; and a young woman with a secret mission...

Through these and others, a portrait unfolds of life under the shadow of the Price: the surveillance drones and police androids that maintain order, life at the bottom and the top, and the beginnings of an uprising...