After preventing conservative MP Victor Palgrave from engineering a human mind-controlled teenage army, Joe Dyson and Ani Lee, operatives for a secret youth division of British Intelligence, have probably earned a rest. But there’s no time to be lax with bizarre new developments popping up across the UK and the world.

While busting a group that’s pressing teen runaways into slave labor building tech, Joe discovers a computer component not yet out on the market, linked to a very popular, but highly secretive gaming company based in California. Meanwhile, skilled hacker Ani works her way into a vigilante hacking ring intent on using viral social media to bring the truth to the world and bring world governments to their knees. They’re method: rewriting reality, virtually, so that the world never knows the difference.

As Ani's and Joe’s missions draw closer together, they realize that they have been corralled into a real-life video game—one where the levels are constantly being rewritten, and the stakes are constantly shifting.

What happens when AI evolves to the point where it has a mind of its own? When the computer threatens to turn on its master? Joe, Ani, and the world are about to find out.

Mike A. Lancaster’s love of science fiction was first forged at an early age by reading Gulliver’s Travels, The War of the Worlds, and Journey to the Center of the Earth, and watching Gerry Anderson shows, Doctor Who, Quatermass movies, and Star Trek. His previous novels, dotwav, Human.4, and The Future We Left Behind, introduced a chilling techno-world where we only think we’re in control. He lives with his wife, children, and a menagerie of pets in Peterborough, England.