The House of the Scorpion

Matt is a clone of El Patrn, the 140-year-old drug lord who rules Opium, a narco-state wedged between the United States and Mexico. Raised in secret by the cook Celia and educated by his bodyguard Tam Lin, Matt grows up in a household that treats him as either a pet or a monster. When he discovers his true purpose — to serve as an organ harvest for El Patrn — he escapes across the border into Aztln (formerly Mexico), survives the brutal labor camps of the Keepers, and ultimately returns to inherit Opium after El Patrn's death, positioned to dismantle the empire built on eejit slavery and human trafficking.

In a future where a strip of land called Opium separates the United States from Aztln (Mexico), the drug lord Matteo Alacrn — known as El Patrn — has ruled for nearly 150 years by growing opium poppies with a labor force of eejits: human beings with computer chips implanted in their brains that dest...