The gulf between rich and poor has never been wider.

The middle classes have become poor; and the poor are now an embarrassment to be forgotten. Those with a regular wage, no matter how small, are the lucky ones. In the ghettos and inner cities, impoverished families try to find work, eking out a meagre existence on benefits and welfare. As the world’s economy fails and unemployment continues to rise, more and more people appear to be slipping through the net. An ever increasing number of derelicts sleeps in the parks and in cardboard cities along the waterfronts. Former blue collar workers, those who were once gainfully employed in factories, mills or shops, now sit hunched on street corners, begging. Poverty - always before, a third world problem - now overshadows the developed nations as well.

Growing numbers are turning to crime in order to supplement what little income they would otherwise have. Crime, in turn, is growing increasingly violent. Violence has become just another aspect of everyday life. Street gangs fight for control of their turfs; drug dealers battle openly for territory. Organised Crime syndicates run the gambling, prostitution and protection rackets as though they were stock-exchange quoted businesses. The hot and humid evenings of Summer bring out rampaging mobs, to protest governmental apathy in frenzies of destruction. Looters take whatever they can move while rioters torch cars and smash shop windows. Ordinary, law-abiding citizens barricade themselves in their homes after dark for safety. Outnumbered and outgunned, and perhaps also because many of them are paid to avert their eyes, the police can do little but watch, and pick up the pieces each morning.

Downtown is the domain of opulent office buildings, built from glistening glass and shining steel - symbols of high technology and economic might. In this information age, the two are the same. The large, multi-national corporations based in these gleaming blocks amass greater and greater wealth and power, by any and every means. A hostile take-over can be literally that, as they are backed by armies of mercenaries and the smartest of lawyers. They answer to no-one. Government controls are ignored with impunity as politicians are bought off. The third world and the environment are no more than resources to be exploited and plundered, then discarded once they have outlived their usefulness. Business ethics are forgotten in the cut-throat world of inter-company politics. Corporate espionage is a way of life.

Executives and senior managers live in luxury and privilege, protected by their bodyguards, and buffered from the world beyond their doors by their money and influence. As society disintegrates about them, they avert their eyes; flaunting their wealth, playing with high-tech executive toys, and indulging in the intrigues of politics.

The world is torn by strife and disorder.

Civil wars and bloody coups are causing turmoil across large areas of Africa, South and Central America, Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia. Following the disintegration of the communist block, weapons and munitions ranging from small arms to fighter aircraft and nuclear warheads are readily available on the black market. Even the latest, sophisticated weaponry is obtainable by anyone willing to pay for it, and is used to suppress militant guerrillas and peaceful dissidents alike. Civil rights and freedom of speech are privileges available only to those with the money, influence and military strength to defend them. The Geneva Convention is no more than a footnote in the history books; the United Nations is impotent. Armies rape and destroy. Bandits fight amongst themselves over the meagre spoils stolen from refugees. Relief organisations and hospitals, which once provided safe haven from the brutalities of war, are now targets for attack. Villagers struggle to grow enough to keep themselves alive amidst fields made barren by napalm and strewn with mines.

Neo-Nazis, white supremacists, sectarian and racial-minority groups express themselves both vocally and violently. Armed militias resort to acts of wanton destruction to publicise their contempt for the establishment. Political organisations such as the IRA and ETA strike fear across Europe. Eco-terrorists attack corporate and government sites around the world, conducting their struggle against those who despoil what remains of the environment through hi-tech and computer crime in addition to well-publicised acts of conventional terrorism. The shadowy World Islamic Jihad pursues its campaign against the West through bullet and bomb.

Civilisation is poised on the brink of cataclysm.

The general mood of the public is that mankind will never see another generation. Dumping of toxic and nuclear waste, and destruction of the environment, have disrupted the balance of nature more and more, perhaps beyond the point of repair. Nominally, governments still run the nations of the world. Increasingly though, all real control is in the hands of the large multi-national corporations; yet those with power are unwilling to accept the responsibilities that it brings. The spectre of sudden, senseless, and violent death hangs over everybody, possibly from terrorist bombs or maybe just from random gang attacks on the streets. Values and ethics have lost their meaning. In the light of these beliefs, most people wish only to live for today, to take whatever pleasures they can glean from life regardless of the consequences. For almost everyone, the fight to retain a sense of morality in the twilight of the world is over.

It is a world not dissimilar to our own.

Yet collapse isn’t inevitable; and some few individuals still desperately fight the uphill struggle to maintain their sense of integrity. Once perhaps, their honesty might have been admired, even by those who lacked the courage to follow the same path; but now their convictions are only despised. Unthanked and unrewarded, their conflict is against helplessness and hopelessness as much as it is against amorality. In this world, there is no good or bad, no black or white; only differing shades of grey.

Against this dark background of desperation, corruption and moral decay, the Blackeagle/Blackeagle Security and Investigations Company has a reputation for getting any job done when other recourse has been tried and failed. In the chaos of a world poised on the brink of self-destruction, it provides security services, investigative work, surveillance and other paramilitary and espionage tasks to governments, companies and individuals all over the world. Its operatives are hired guns, private eyes, trouble-shooters and soldiers: skilled, professional, and respected by their clients and adversaries alike.

Into this world comes Diane Grace Stewart. Crippled in an attack by the World Islamic Jihad three years before and restricted to a wheelchair; nineteen years old and still fresh from high-school, she is Blackeagle's newest and youngest operative. Where knowledge is power, her talent lies in her ability to extract information from computer systems: hacking. Her adversaries are the other hackers, programmers and security controllers in cyberspace.