Inside the Seattle Preservation Dome, it's always the Fifth of October, the city caught in an endless time loop. Outside, the world lies in apocalyptic ruin. "Reformed" graffiti artist Ian Palmer is the only one who knows the truth, and he is desperate to wake up the rest of the city before the alien Curator of the living museum erases Ian's identity forever.

Small-town teenager Kylie is one of the few survivors to escape both the initial shock wave and the poison rains that followed. Now she must make her way across the blasted lands, pursued by a mad priest and menaced by skin-and-bone things that might once have been human. Her destination is the Preservation, and her mission is to destroy it. But once inside, she meets Ian, and together they discover that the Preservation's reality is even stranger than it appears.