After being infected with nanites from a dead Pax Romana super-soldier, Genevieve should have died, like every other infected civilian. Instead she survived, remade in the image of the so-called Installs. Unable to truly trust her any longer, her people send her deep into Pax Romana space with a mission: upload a virus to destroy the Install reserves.

When she arrives, she finds not the reserves but the self-destructive dregs of the program, the few who didn't die on the battlefield. Not allowed to retire, these Installs are charged with watching over dying infected civilians—but Genevieve knows those deaths aren't inevitable. To win a chance to save them, all she has to do is confess that she's from a conquered, enemy planet, to the empire's most efficient killers.