Matt is six years old when he discovers that he is different from other children, from other people.

To most people Matt isn't a boy, but a beast, dirty and disgusting.

But to El Patron, lord of a country called Opium, Matt is the guarantee of eternal life.

El Patron loves Matt as he loves himself - for Matt is himself.

They share the same DNA. As Matt struggles to understand his existence and what that existence truly means, he is threatened by a host of sinister and manipulating characters, from El Patron's power-hungry family to the brain-deadened eejits and mindless slaves that toil Opium's poppy fields.

Surrounded by a dangerous army of bodyguards, Matt longs for escape.

But even escape is no guarantee of freedom because Matt is marked but his difference in ways that he doesn't even suspect.