"Defiant" is the ninth in a series of near future SciFi/Thrillers whose young heroine Ell Donsaii has a nerve mutation which has made her a genius as well as an athletic phenomenon. In "Defiant," she, her husband Shan Kinrais, and their friend Gary Pace begin working on commercialization of the carbon allotrope technology they learned about in "Allotropes." Also, new uses, both beneficial and dangerous are being found for her ports. These wormholes aren't big enough to send people through, yet they make possible technologies that have created huge changes in our world. Those changes have resulted in tremendous economic and political upheavals. The political disturbances bring Edith Stockton to Presidential power, a woman who despises Ell and who is being stroked in that direction by individuals who want the secrets of Ell's highly dangerous 'single-ended ports.' Stockton imprisons Ell in an effort to extort the single-ended port technology from her. Ell, having determined that she cannot release that particular secret, must decide how to respond.