The war between dataDyne and the Carrington Institute is heating up. Carrington offices around the globe are being systematically targeted and destroyed by unknown forces, the casualties are mounting, and more important profits are dwindling. To make matters worse, a sophisticated ring of computer hackers, codenamed STRONTIUM, are testing the Institute's defences to their limits.

Joanna Dark, fresh from her first mission--codenamed INITIAL VECTOR--and now operating as a full-fledged secret agent for the Carrington Institute, is assigned to hunt down and destroy the source of the attacks. But her search for the faceless enemy leads her not just into another bloody battle with hypercorp dataDyne--but headlong into a global conspiracy that's been shaping the world for decades.