Coast City, California. May 1999. The age of heroes is over. The capes are gone. The world has moved on.

Hal Jordan is sixteen and seven years removed from watching his father's plane fall out of the sky in flames. He doesn't talk about it. He keeps his eyes on the ground.

Until something awakes within the Coast canyons.

An energy surge from a classified lab activates an ancient machine with a single directive. The Eradicator. Its target is Kadie, a mysterious loner who arrived at Coast City High with no past and no answers. She knows more than she's saying. The machine knows exactly what she is.

And when the sky splits open, a ship burns through the atmosphere trailing green fire. It crashes in the desert outside the city. From the wreckage climbs Abin Sur. Purple skin. Eyes that have seen galaxies collapse. A peacekeeper from beyond the stars, marooned on a planet that stopped looking up. When he finds Hal, he doesn't see a hero. He sees a boy in free fall from grief.

The military arrives in force. The machine is relentless. Coast City becomes a warzone. And for the first time in decades, the world watches something it forgot was possible.

To save his friends, his family, and the girl no one can explain, Hal will have to do the one thing he's spent seven years avoiding.

He'll have to fly.