Where is Q?

Clair and Jesse have barely been reunited when the world is plunged into its biggest crisis since the Water Wars. The d-mat network is broken. The world has ground to a halt. People are trapped, injured, dying. It's the end of the world as Clair knows it—and it's partly her fault.

"The girl who killed d-mat" is enlisted to track down her missing friend Q—the rogue AI who repeatedly saved Clair's life. Q is the key to fixing the system, but she isn't responding to calls for help, and even if she did . . . can she be trusted?

Targeted by dupes, abandoned by her friends, caught in a web of lies that strike at the very essence of who she is, Clair finds powerful allies in RADICAL, secretive activists who are the polar opposite of anti-d-mat group WHOLE. However, if she helps them find Q, will she be inadvertently trapping her friend in a life of servitude—or worse, sending her to an early death by erasure? Caught between pro- and anti-d-mat philosophies, in a world on the brink of all-out war, Clair must decide where she stands—and who she stands with, at the end.