Second decade of the 21st century. Corporations rule. The world is threatened by a new plague: NAS. Nerve Attenuation Syndrome, fatal, epidemic, its cause and cure unknown. The corporations are opposed by the LoTeks, a resistance movement risen from the streets: hackers, data-pirates, guerrilla-fighters in the info-wars. The corporations defend themselves. They hire the Yakuza, the most powerful of all crime syndicates. They sheathe their data in black ice, lethal viruses waiting to burn the brains of intruders. But the LoTeks wait in their strongholds, in the old city cores, like rats in the walls of the world. The most valuable information must sometimes be entrusted to mnemonic couriers, elite agents who smuggle data in wet-wired brain implants. Johnny Mnemonic is one of these couriers. This is his story.