Silence. After 74 years without laughter, without smiling, without touch, without kisses to dry dirty tears, this is what the world has come to know. Silence, and gray.
50 years from now, humanity voted to ban love from existence. It was their choice--a choice agreed on by everyone. So it was prohibited. Smiles were gone. Laughter was illegal. Kissing, hugging and touching were unthinkable. With each day that passed, eyes faded to a deep, empty gray.
But what humanity did not know is that without love, there was only hate. And this hate destroyed the world. It was a disease inside humans that burned everything in its path.
97 people survived this destruction. 97 people who took refuge in an old, gray bunker underground that compliments their gray eyes. This is where the story begins--13 years after the world's end, with a people who know nothing except how to live in a world without love. No one speaks to each other. The thought of touching one another is repulsive. Their world is routine--meals, studies, Collaboration. It's like this every day. Laney's life is like this every day. The stories she has heard about what humanity used to be like when love existed are just that--stories. So she goes about her life like everyone else, living in fear and silence.
Until her people start to learn how to hate, and the 97 realize one, simple fact: that love is needed if they are going to survive.
With one final, desperate attempt, Laney and seven other teens--a boy named Nash with eyes a little less gray than the rest, a curious redhead named Theodore, Arsen, who keeps his face hidden behind dark sunglasses--are sent on a journey in the world above to discover love again and to bring it back to humanity before it's too late. But every step forward is a step into the past, and a look into a life Laney is not sure she even wants to see.