Inertia and Momentum

Larken Marche is human. Dandelion Lemaire, former international transport security droid, is not…but she tries. Their relationship is complicated, and even more complicated by the fact that Larken is the single most influential voice against the militant anti-cloning extremists on the west coast of the United States. As Europe falls before another extremist group called Liberti Custodi, Larken must expand her influence to help fight the emerging threat. But they won't fold lightly, and fighting back may cost her her life.

Meanwhile, Amanda Briggs, a genetically altered clone or model, loses her last fight in the pits and is forced into early retirement. When she sets her sights on Guthrie Beaumont, the dashing yet cruel high-level employee in the facility she's forced to live in, everything initially seems perfect. It's only later when he shows his true cruelty and an unplanned pregnancy forces her hand that she must make a decision: stay in the abusive environment and deal with the fallout, or volunteer to be one of a few hundred to join an experimental community outside the compound walls. Either decision risks the life of her unborn daughter.

In this three-hundred seventy-page third installment of the Virtual Wars Saga, Larken helps establish the first self-governed model community in the Village in New York City. Modeling sentiment is on the wane, and between the extremists who target models and a compromised police force, Larken's struggle is inseparable from the battle of model-kind across the United States to find acceptance and carve out livelihoods. Violence and destruction are the continuing responses to their pleas as the first open conflict of the Virtual Wars begins.