""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 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 and her sister Samantha are reunited and, along with Duncan, they into VR5 to discover what really happened the night of the car crash. It turns out there was no car crash: Sydney's memories were altered by her father to protect her from the Committee. A faction of the Committee is after Sydney; Oliver is assigned to murder Sydney but rebels. Sydney goes into VR7 to rescue her mother from her coma.