On a future desert Earth, humans can only be one of three things: Ascended, Descended, or Middling. Brought up, like all children, as a Middling, Audacious Carr drives of her day of alignment when she was ascend and join her family aboard the space station, Faithful. When she fails the alignment process and is relegated to the undercity of Disaster, Audacious is devastated. But only then does her true story begin.