Travis Block is a shadowy Government agent who specializes in removing operatives whose covers have been exposed. He then has to uncover a deadly conspiracy within his own ranks that reaches the highest echelons of power.

Manchester, the present. Michael divides his time between the job center and the pub. A chance meeting with Lee, an introduction to her Uncle Ian and a heavy night on the lash lead to a job working the door at a Northern Quarter massage parlor. After witnessing the violent death of one of the punters, Michael experiences blood-drenched flashbacks and feels himself being sucked into a twilight world that he doesn't understand but that is irresistibly attractive. When he eventually finds out what goes on in the room below Cloud 9, Michaels' life will never be the same again.

To win scholarship money for college, Lauren enters the same beauty pageant her mom once dominated in her youth. Lauren is thrust into a dark, toxic world of cutthroat competition and manipulation. Too preoccupied with the pageant, Lauren doesn’t realize that her best friend Rae is falling seriously ill with an uncommon and potentially deadly disease — meningitis B – prompting her to turn the pageant platform into a tool for awareness.