Beryl, a young Cunimorph, has no choice but work for and serve the passengers aboard the Atmos, a generational ship heading to a far-away star system. She lives a double life of her duties in the garbage disposal system and learning/exploring the ship's ancient systems and secrets, but after being framed for causing a flood that destroys hard-to-replace equipment she could get the death sentence. She flees and uses her knowlege of the ship to survive and find out what happened With the help of Chive, a gardener from a different section of the ship. Visiting Chive makes her have more contact with the human sections and realize how terrible their life actually is. Beryl unveils a conspiracy that could prove she was set up in an attempt to sabotage her kind and make their living conditions worse. That starts a quest to find out what happened and try to get the right people convicted. while having to decide on a more radical path to attempt to free her kind or just one that could maybe bring their living conditions back to an acceptable state.