All is provided, yet everything is lacking. The Metro is the plenum, a future-city of color and exuberance, but its citizens are full of violence and greed. If there is any hope for peace it lies with the Iris, a machine that can link the minds of every human-being to create a single mind, a single energy. Someone just has to push the button. Sean, born into this world of hate, sets out to do the impossible: to take the data he has stolen off the internet and turn on the Iris. His journey will set off one of the greatest rat-chases the Metro has ever seen. All the big players are in on it, to stop or help Sean's mad rush to the Iris. There's Casey with her army of gangsters, who wants nothing else but to make sure the Metro stays a jungle. There's Randal the mutant, a creature of nightmare surrounded by other misbegotten souls, cursed with an inexplicable fate. And then there's Tommy the Bouncer, Tommy the Butcher, Tommy the Terrible, who just wants to beat everything to a bloody pulp. These players and more all have their eyes on the prize: the Black Tape, the switch that if flicked may set off an age of no-death. Maybe. In the end, Sean will discover that the Metro might be too far gone. Hope's slim, but it's there. He just has to try. Easier said than done.