The Plaintiff, Universal Patents, Inc., was heartless.

The judge, Rex "Spider" Speyer was merciless.

Ellen Welles' case seemed hopeless.

Unless her lawyer could locate the mad creator of FAUST - the robot-inventor who'd given Universal Patents its stranglehold on the world economy - she was sure to die for patent infringement, a capital crime in the twenty-first century.

Quentin Thomas, Ellen's lawyer, already knew that the judge was a psychopath, and he quickly learned just how dirty Universal could play...