It is the most puzzling case Eve Dallas has ever faced: the founder of the computer gaming giant U-Play is found decapitated in his locked, private playroom. And now Eve and her team are about to enter the next level of police work, in a world where fantasy is the ultimate seduction-and the price of defeat is death...

Moving to her father's home in California after a decade at her mother's isolated ranch, a teen who has been taught to fear technology reunites with friends and family members before experiencing nightmares about a dark-web video game that poses life-threatening dangers.

While playing an old fantasy videogame, Ash encounters Ruby, who seems far more than a pre-programmed side character, and together they discover she's a sentient AI originally designed as a weapon, trapping them both in deadly game that blurs the lines between real and virtual.