Enter the uniquely prescient world of the Sprawl—lyric and mechanical, sensual and violent, sobering and exciting—where multinational corporations and high-tech outlaws vie for power, traveling into the computer-generated universe known as cyberspace.

Into this world comes Mona, a young girl with a murky past and an uncertain future whose life is on a collision course with internationally famous virtual reality star Angie Mitchell. Since childhood, Angie has been able to tap into cyberspace without a computer. Now, from inside cyberspace, a kidnapping plot is masterminded by a phantom entity who has plans for Mona, Angie, and all humanity, plans that cannot be controlled . . . or even known.

And behind the intrigue lurks the shadowy Yakuza, the powerful Japanese criminal syndicate, whose leaders ruthlessly manipulate people and events to suit their own purposes. But even the Yakuza is no match for the machinations of an opaque artificial intelligence, whose goals no human can hope to comprehend.