A shapeshifter the CIA has codenamed “the feral fugitive” finds itself conscious for the first time as it flees a research facility in the frozen wastelands of Antarctica. Hunted by the people who created it, with no knowledge of its true identity or past, the fugitive assumes the forms and attributes of every animal it encounters as it attempts to learn about itself and the world it inhabits.
When the CIA assigns agent Paula Haseya Tsintah to find the fugitive, the fugitive must not only come to terms with its own identity but leave the only family it has ever known – a pod of shark-hunting orcas – to seek out other locales and lifeforms it can become in order to avoid capture.
Can the fugitive be free in a world of humans who want to exploit it for their own gain? Where did the fugitive come from? Will the fugitive ever find its family again?