Clair and Jesse have barely been reunited when the world is plunged into its biggest crisis since the Water Wars. The d-mat network is broken. The world has ground to a halt. People are trapped, injured, dying. It's the end of the world as Clair knows it and it's partly her fault. Now she's been enlisted to track down her friend Q, the rogue AI who repeatedly saved her life—and who is the key to fixing the system.

Targeted by dupes, abandoned by her friends, and caught in a web of lies that strike at the very essence of who she is, Clair quickly finds powerful and dangerous allies. But if she helps them, will she be leading her friend straight into a trap? Caught between pro- and anti-d-mat philosophies, in a world on the brink of all-out war, Clair must decide where she stands—and who she stands with, at the end.