The Anti-Freedom Bombing has shaken the Great American Union. But Sinclair lives and the machinations for retaliation are set in motion before the blood has dried in the fields of Battle-Zone 1. The GAU looks outward at the obvious suspects of the attack while mitigating a fomenting threat from within. All the while, a virus has been unleashed that is marching through Empires like a ravenous horde. Out in Progressium, under the sheltering wings of the Valkyrie defense system, the welcoming facade of Quintana's adoptive home begins to melt away, revealing a vindictiveness and viciousness she had thought she escaped. Barely beginning to enjoy her newfound folk celebrity, she finds herself locked down in her subsidized apartment for fear a different virus— White Supremacy. Meanwhile, Moon has fled to the northwest pocket of the Second Empire, where she enters into the harem of an Imperian oligarch as obsessed with collecting harlots as he is with directing ballet. And in the renascent city of Neo-Philadelphia, Razor Jane awakens in a vat of recuperation gel before one of the most powerful businessviros in the GAU. But when she breaks free, she's not entirely herself, not entirely human.