Juliette Ferrars, 17, is in the bunker at Omega Point, the rebel stronghold where she, her boyfriend 18-year-old Adam Kent, his little brother 10-year-old James, and the rebel spy, 20-year-old Kenji Kishimoto, all fled at the end of Shatter Me. There, she thinks about the outside world, which she hasn’t seen in two weeks. She struggles to remember that this is not like the jail cell where she was trapped at the beginning of Shatter Me—she is not a prisoner here. Despite this, she feels increasingly anxious as time goes on. She is supposed to be learning to harness her Energy so that she can use her powers of lethal touch to help the members of Omega Point, who are training to take down Warner, the leader of Sector 45, and his men, who work for the totalitarian regime known as The Reestablishment.

Juliette spends more time worrying that she will hurt someone, either accidentally or intentionally, than she does preparing. She thinks about how Warner is alive, and that nobody except her knows that he can touch her without suffering from her powers.