Charlie investigates the case of a new missing person in Cape Town and finds that once again, a local mystery is linked to Vexcorp. Reena is faced with a difficult decision when she meets a young woman who is dying of AIDS. 01 Boxer makes an important trade with his father, at a high price. Also, in a series of flashbacks, Charlie remembers his days working for Vexcorp Security Services.
Charlie Jade is a rogue private detective in a world dominated by greedy multinational corporations. When Charlie sees the inactive person of a beautiful young woman he realizes she embodies the impossible: she has no identity, something inconceivable in Charlie's world. While tracking her suspected hugger, the trail leads Charlie to a secret desert facility. A massive explosion propels him into a parallel universe, our own chaotic twenty-first century world where he is both baffled by its differences and seduced by its similarities. Charlie is soon drawn into a conflict that not only involves his home universe and the one he now inhabits but also includes another, a pristine pacifist universe with unsuspected terror at its heart.