The Venetian Court

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...