VR.5

""Welcome to the game, ...."" Sydney Bloom, a loner VR hobbyist, stumbles on a whole new dimension of VR when she inadvertently discovers that she can ""pull"" anyone into VR with her via the phone lines. When she innocently uses it on a man she is dating, she learns, to her horror, that he's a serial rapist/killer. To complicate matters, her inquiries into VR have brought her to the attention of a super-secret intelligence operation called ""the Committee"". Her life is changed forever by the words""Welcome to the game, Sydney Bloom ....""

On her first VR assignment for The Committee, Sydney must find an unhappy and spiteful teenage genius - who after making a momentous discovery has run away from the top secret weapons research establishment where he worked - before he can do any harm. During her search, Sydney must try to deal with her own sense of solitude.

Sydney investiagtes the mind of Janine, a cashier at her workplace whom she discovers is stealing. Sydney herself gets pulled into the excitements and thrills of these criminal activities.

Sydney is assigned to to subconsciously prod Jackson Boothe, a troubled employee of the Committee, into returning to work. In doing so, Sydney discovers that Booth is an assassin, and he murders Sydney's Committee contact, Dr. Frank Morgan.

Oliver Sampson becomes Sydney's new contact for the Committee, and he pushes her into trying to trace who hired Boothe. Sydney discovers that Dr. Morgan's corpse has been cryogenically preserved.

Sydney is kidnapped by a faction of the Committee who brutally question her to discover her secret. She manages to contact Duncan for help, and he enters into VR in search of her. Oliver is somehow in possession of the journal of Sydney's father, but is he on Sydney's side?