Something is going terribly wrong at the top secret Pinewood Military Installation, and the teenage geniuses who study and work there are about to discover a horrible truth as they lead a small military force trying to retrieve data and escape before the compound self-destructs.

"New Liberty City, 2134. Two corporations have replaced the US, splitting the country's remaining forty-five states (five have been submerged under the ocean) between them: Stellaxis Innovations and Greenleaf. There are nine supercities within the continental US, and New Liberty City is the only amalgamated city split between the two megacorps, and thus at a perpetual state of civil war as the feeds broadcast the atrocities committed by each side....

That the day-in, day-out world is the real world is merely perception. In reality it is a hoax perpetrated by an all-powerful artificial intelligence that control us. A small group of humans has found a way out of the construct, and is now fighting for the future of the human race.

"In modern day Los Angeles, a shadowy faction led by the Governor of California develops the arcane art of combat linguistics, planting the seeds of a future totalitarian empire in Scott Moore's Battle of the Linguist Mages. Isobel is the Queen of the medieval rave-themed VR game Sparkle Dungeon. Her prowess in the game makes her an ideal candidate to learn the secrets of "power morphemes"-unnaturally dense units of meaning that warp perception when...

"Yared Heywat lives an isolated life in Addis Prime -- a hardscrabble city with rundown tech, lots of rules, and not much to do. His worrywart Uncle Moti and bionic lioness Besa are his only family... and his only friends. Often in trouble for his thrill-seeking antics and smart mouth, those same qualities make Yared a star player of the underground augmented reality game, The Hunt for Kaleb's Obelisk. But when a change in the game rules prompts...

Izzy gets sucked into the world of her new video game, where a robot named Rae tells her she is destined to save Dungeon City from the Big Boss.

"For seventeen-year-old Opal Hopper, code is magic. She can build entire worlds from scratch -- shimmering lakes, Mars craters, any virtual experience her heart desires. But she can't code her dad back into her life. When he disappeared after her tenth birthday, leaving only a cryptic note, Opal tried desperately to find him. And when he never turned up, she enrolled at a boarding school for technical prodigies and tried to forget. Until now. Because...

It's 2045, with the world on the brink of chaos and collapse, but the people have found salvation in the OASIS, an expansive virtual reality universe created by the brilliant and eccentric James Halliday. When Halliday dies, he leaves his immense fortune to the first person to find a digital Easter egg he has hidden somewhere in the OASIS, sparking a contest that grips the entire world. When an unlikely young hero named Wade Watts decides to join...

"Kirito jumps into a new VRMMORPG called ALfheim Online (ALO) in search of Asuna, who still hasn't regained consciousness. On his quest to find the World Tree and reach Asuna, he meets a sylph girl named Leafa. A veteran player experienced with the sword, Leafa recognizes that Kirito is motivated by serious circumstances and decides to help him. But...Leafa's identity in the real world is Suguha Kirigaya--Kirito's sister. And it's the glimmer of her...

Having defeated General Eugene of the Salamanders and having aided the alliance between Sylphs and Cait Siths by protecting their leaders, Kirito and Leafa reach Alne, the town at the foot of the World Tree, at long last. But before they can tackle the tree--and their main objective--server maintenance begins, and they are forced to log out. Back in the real world, Kazuto and Suguha Kirigaya, each unaware of the other's in-game identity, pay a visit...