In the near future, a revolution in technology and medicine has brought us into a new era where deep understanding of the brain and human body changed how people live their lives. Instead of exercise or healthy eating, people now turn to the immense power of physical modifications to look how they want to look and possess the prowess they want to possess. In this new world lives a young man named Maxwell Cross and an FBI agent named George Athens. Both of their lives are about to be changed by an event with enormous consequences for the entire world. An American terrorist group is striking out at the government they feel is limiting their freedoms, and at the world who has not stopped it, by interfering with the release of the new Virtual Reality Massively Multiplayer Role Playing Game called Venture Online. They have inserted a virus into the game that makes it so that if you die in the game, death follows in real life as well. There is no way to log out. Billions of people are trapped in the game, including Max and his friends. Max and company must learn to adapt to their new world and survive in it, while George Athens is assigned as the lead on the case to catch those responsible. Will George manage to catch those responsible and get the people trapped inside the game out? Will Max and friends manage to survive in their new environment?