Immediately after his father and brother are killed in a suspicious explosion, twelve-year-old Roger Foster is sent into hiding by his mother, Dr. Helen Foster, the most renowned artificial intelligence developer in the world. Twenty years later, Roger has become a secretive cyber-criminal.
It's New Year's day in 2223, and he has just pulled off the hack of the century. At the same time, Dr. Foster's greatest creation--the AI Proteus--witnesses her death. Proteus does the only thing he can do. The one thing he is programmed not to do. He calls Roger.
With the assistance of the enigmatic hacker-spy, Singularity, Roger must abandon his life of anonymity and solitude to solve the mystery of his estranged mother's death and save Proteus from being destroyed by The Orbit Lives Corporation, the most powerful entity in the system.