After being dragged back to the city that made him famous (and nearly drove him insane), outlaw journalist Spider Jerusalem is getting his old footing back. The stories are rolling in - nanotech consciousness downloads, dislocation disorders among cryogenic revivals, dispatches from the human cutlure reservations - and Jerusalem, with his shiny new apartment and fresh-from-the-strip-club assistant, is firing on all cylinders. It's too good to last, of course. But not even Spider Jerusalem could predict how fast it would all go downhill, or how quickly he would end up penniless, locked in a pay toilet and hunted by multiple teams of assassins demanding payment in blood for his many transgressions.