At seventeen, Su Mu found a piece of sheet metal in the hills behind his home. It was engraved with: "Su Mu. Target confirmed. Elimination level."
That's when he learned there was a chip embedded in the back of his neck, implanted by his mother with her own hands when he was fourteen months old. The elimination window had been open for ten months. He would die on his twentieth birthday.
His mother left him a letter: Don't trust anyone, including your grandfather.
The boy slung a bamboo basket over his back and set off for Africa. There, he would find his mother's operating room, a way to change his fate, and the mysterious organization called Cradle, which had a million-dollar bounty on it. The chip his mother left him was said to open every door in Cradle.
