Severin Morozov is an ordinary sixteen-year-old earthly teenager — or at least considers himself to be one until a certain moment. He studies at a youth college-boarding school on the island of Alegria, occasionally travels home to his mother, plays fenestra for the college team, and socializes with friends. Everything like everyone else, in general. But at one fine moment he finally learns the truth. First of all, Anna Ivanovna Morozova, his mother, is actually starhiker Elena Klimova, and moreover not his birth mother. And most importantly — Severin is not a human being at all, but an echaine, taken in and adopted by Elena after the catastrophe of an echaine ship, when he was only two years old. And finally, all this time he had been sought by certain earthly special services for unclear purposes, from whom his mother (even if not by birth, still his mother) had been trying to protect Seva his whole life. And with all of this, Severin must somehow continue to live, figure out who he really is — human or echaine — and also make a decision that could cost the lives of as many as two hundred people taken hostage by the echaines…