As the story opens, Kayla is in a meeting with her guidance counselor who has just informed her that she will not be receiving a scholarship to an art school as she'd hoped. Kayla is upset with the news but the disappointment is overshadowed by the fact that her family situation has become unstable ever since her parents accepted the bar code tattoos. Kayla encounters a group of students who are discussing their resistance to the bar code and becomes interested in their ideas. Over the coming weeks, she spends more time with the students and comes to have an active part in their group. The group makes plans to meet in the Adirondack Mountains if they are forced to leave their homes.

Kayla arrives home one afternoon to find an ambulance at her house. Her father has committed suicide and Kayla thinks back to the depression that has been evident in him since soon after he got the tattoo. Kayla's mother, Ashley, begins falling apart as well.

Ashley is a nurse and stops going to the hospital for awhile. When she returns to work, she is obviously depressed and is soon stealing medication from the hospital. She hints at the fact that the tattoo is evil and urges Kayla to never give in to having it. They discover the bar code also includes genetic information and is being used to make all sorts of important decisions. Those with genetic tendencies toward diseases simply won't be hired to work anywhere. One night Kayla arrives home to find Ashley frantic. Ashley reveals that babies born to parents with undesirable gene sets are quietly being killed while babies born with desirable gene sets are being experimented on to enhance specific abilities. She sets fire to herself and the house, trying to burn the tattoo off her wrist.

Kayla wakes in a hospital and learns she is about to be tattooed. She manages to escape and encounters a trucker who gives her good advice. She later encounters an elderly couple who reveal that people older than eighty are also being terminated in hospitals to avoid the cost of nursing homes. Kayla makes her way to the mountains where she meets up with Mfumbe Taylor, a student from her school, who has run away to avoid the tattoo. They head to the Adirondacks and hide out there with a group of resisters who have connected with Kayla using an emerging psychic ability. Kayla and Mfumbe live together and eventually begin communicating through those abilities. They learn there is an active resistance forming and Mfumbe believes they have a duty to join. Kayla has seen visions of their participation but fears what will happen if they join but agrees they have little choice.