Almost no one within the quiet town of Ann Arbor, Michigan realises that an unremarkable building within their Industrial Precinct houses a large multidisciplinary advanced Information-Warfare development team, or that the building itself is not what it appears. Department of Defence budget cuts threaten to halt the team's Intelligent Weapons project and, desperate for a breakthrough, Alex Fox sets up an unofficial experiment to prove the capabilities of his revolutionary software architecture. Shortly after, key people start dying in what appear to be unconnected but incredible accidents. The deaths attract the attention of a pair of detectives from the Ann Arbor Police Department as the DoD attempts to both control and cover up the situation unfolding inside its facility. At the same time, misinformation and confusion begins to cripple the wider US Administrative and Defence agencies while tensions escalate between nuclear capable powers. It falls to a handful of people to halt the chain of events that Alex Fox has triggered. Charlie Ganderton is the only man who knows Alex's work well enough to have a chance of succeeding. However, not even Charlie is prepared for the ferocity of the brutal and clinically detached intelligence pitted against them...