CYBERSPACE—THE REAL FINAL FRONTIER

The place: New York City. The time: any day now. Tech and Marz are brothers, orphans, and misfits just about everywhere—except on the Virtual Network, where their monster gaming skills leave challengers choking on their datatrails; and their hacking expertise earns them serious cash as freelance cyber-sleuths, running down lost information and missing persons on the Web. The more extreme the cyber-sport, and the tougher the security codes, the better Tech and Marz like it.

A mean game of Death Run is nothing for Tech and Marz. But almost getting killed—for real—on a routine virtual mission is a whole different deal. And that's exactly what a shapeless, demonic cyber-thing tries to do when Tech accidentally frees a mysterious kidnap victim deep inside a government database. The run-in leaves the brothers with a ton of fried hardware and too many unanswered questions. But they're heading into the dark and dangerous underbelly of the virtual world to do some extreme detective work—and crack what could be the motherboard of all mysteries. And this death run is no game.