Having strung along with delinquent friends to a home robbery that ends in a wealthy old woman's death, Manila slum youth Sonny is too stunned to get away while the others elude police capture. He's duly convicted of murder - worse, as an adult, since the orphan boy's birth certificate was lost in a fire, and his callous foster parents are nowhere to be found. Thrown into lockup among hardened lifers, the terrified 16-year-old soon finds himself at the mercy of various strong-arm cliques on death row. He's courted by booty-bandit Gabino, who plots to seize cell block "mayor" Mio's status as chief executor of the in-house drug trade controlled by rich prisoner Assunta. A few figures take a more protective than exploitive interest in the new fish. But Sonny's best ally, it turns out, is old-school gangster Sinat, who at 77 is still gruff and imposing enough to survive outside all the block's warring factions.