Independent Edinburgh, 2026. The birth-rate is down in the Council’s ‘perfect city’ and gangs of disaffected kids roam the streets. A break-in at the former Scottish Parliament archive is rapidly followed by two gruesome murders, the victims mutilated and covered in blood-drenched branches. Renegade investigator Quintilian Dalrymple’s subsequent enquiries take a new twist when Edinburgh’s brightest teenagers are abducted to the much-feared democratic city-state of Glasgow. What Quint finds there will change his life forever …