Jenny Lowe, a primatologist studying chimpanzees, is running for her life with the child of a murdered fellow scientist after a civil war explodes. Jenny grabbing the notebooks of the primatologist who's been killed. She brings the girl to Chicago to await the discovery of her relatives. The girl is fifteen and lovely, her name is Lucy. Realizing that the child has no living relatives, Jenny begins to care for her as her own. When she reads the notebooks...

In a ruined, nameless city of the future, a woman named Rachel, who makes her living as a scavenger, finds a small green lump of a creature she names ''Borne'' entangled in the fur of Mord, a gigantic, despotic bear. Mord once prowled the corridors of the biotech organization known as the Company, which lies at the outskirts of the city, until he was experimented on, grew large, learned to fly and broke free. Driven insane by his torture at the hands...