Raythen is a professional npc living on a factory city floating in the clouds of venus. as a professional non-player character he works in a variety of virtual combat games that require skills with both ancient and modern weaponry. virtual reality is connected directly to the sensory-motor cortex of the brain so he has become an extremely proficient fighter. one day he gets a message from his online girlfriend to meet for the first time in the flesh on a different factory city. when he gets there he finds himself mixed up in a government police action and discovers that someone his trying to kill him for a reason that he can't guess. he becomes allied with a beautiful and apparently psychotic lawyer and has to use all of the combat skills he's honed over the years to stay alive, and to find out why he's been targeted for death.