Intruder — Louis Charbonneau

He's got the whole town in his hands.

The technical glitches in Hollister, California, began inconspicuously enough -- errors in department store billing and production problems at local factories. But the episodes become more malicious when falsified criminal records are strategically released to employers and press, fake medical reports are sent to spouses, and the city's traffic lights are hacked and thrown into deadly chaos. The only link between these seemingly random occurrences is the Regional Data Center.

Former FBI agent Michael Egan, the RDC's new security director, knows something more than coincidence is involved in these events. The RDC computers certainly aren't foolproof, but the incidents of the last week have grown in such frequency and intensity, it can only mean one thing. It's not a computer malfunction. The system has an intruder.

Someone is in the RDC network, someone who does not belong there. The intruder is cruel, drunk with power, and his games with the RDC have already resulted in a man's death. If Egan and his colleagues can't stop him, many more will die. Hollister is under attack, and the only chance for survival may lie within the very machines where the crisis began.