Before he met the brilliant, hypnotic child Milena, Alex Sharkey had never played with "dolls" -- blue-skinned, gengineered lifeforms designed for work, amusement, or destruction. But the underground gene-hacker is seduced by a megalomaniacal little girl's dream of providing the soulless genetic constructs with free thought and a future -- and he unwittingly unleashes a plague of madness on the world. Now there's a void in his life and a memory that must be refilled, but it means pursuing the dangerous sentient species he helped sire from the ruins of a Magic Kingdom through a wasted Europe. It is Alex Sharkey's last chance -- and the last hope remaining for a once-dominant human race.