The Inside world of 2097 has no prisons. Instead it employs brain reconstruction to erase criminal motives and substitute moral values. The new person is released into society as a model citizen. A perfect system. Nothing can go wrong.Right?Brent Travers is one of those model citizens yet he suffers from amnesic fugue episodes that leave him with the feeling that he has done something horrible - perhaps even killed someone. After the last episode, he awakes in the primitive Outside world to find himself accused of murder. He flees for his life. In the Outside world trials are brief and killers are hung.Pursuing him are Texas Ranger Shelby Darnell, who believes Brent innocent, and Inside Detective Roy Treize, who is willing to see Brent hanged. They work against one another, knowing that being first to make the arrest is a matter of life or death to their quarry. Brent wants desperately to believe that he is not a programmed killer. Yet Rid, an assassin master, sends one "fixer" after another to execute him for failing to make an assigned kill. Brent has no memory of Rid or assassination assignments. He has only one certainty. If he is ever to prove he is not an assassin, he must stay one step ahead of both the lawmen and the deadliest assassins Inside or Outside.