

Bryce Davidson married into the Barber family and has never quite stood straight under the weight of it. On New Year's Day, his wife Ginny leaves to collect relatives and asks him to bathe their infant with a towel. Out of some small, stubborn impulse he fills the bathtub instead. The phone rings. He looks away. By the time he looks back, it is too late. In his collapse he hides what happened. He conceals the baby,covers the room, holds himself together through the Barber family's New Year visit. Every attempt by the relatives to see the child Bryce deflects. Ginny watches him, and something in the way he moves begins to pull at her. She can feel the shape of a closed door. She moves toward it.

"A riot broke out in the suburbs when my mother secretly left me at the edge of it. My crying caught the attention of the winning side.They walked over with their guns raised, and one of them pressed a pistol right against my forehead.Since then, I have 109 brothers in my family.At home, I'm the princess.But in high school, things were not so good.Valeria Rossi, a rich student, beat my legs with a hot curling iron that was still plugged in, burning my skin into blackened, torn flesh. The pain was so intense that I broke free from Valeria's thugs and dragged her down the stairs with me.When I wake up, Marcella Greco, dean of Students, berates me angrily.“All Valeria did is beat you up, When someone talks trash and puts their hands on you, you ought to be asking what you did wrong.How dare you plot revenge against her instead!”“Summon your guardian here right away,or forget about leaving!”All of my hair stands on end as soon as I hear the command.My guardians—109 Brothers—none of them are ordinary people, and I've been leading a normal life for more than a dozen years in order not to cause them any trouble.But if trouble shows up at my door, then I can't help it.“Are you sure you want to meet my guardians, Ms. Greco?”"

Fabron Lovell's life was a mess. His boss treated him like dirt, and his girlfriend dumped him. But he was unexpectedly bound to the Doomsday Shuttle System, forcing him to travel back and forth between the zombie-infested future world and a modern city. In the collapsed future, gold and jewels were worthless junk. Fabron spotted an arbitrage opportunity across time and space and wanted to build his empire in both worlds.