Perfect Dark: Second Front

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**Title** **Second Front**
Cover of Perfect Dark: Second Front
Author	Greg Rucka
Country	United States
Language	English
Series	Perfect Dark
Genre(s)	Science fiction
Publisher	Tor Books
Released	January 9, 2007
Media type	Print (Paperback)
Pages	352 pp
ISBN	ISBN 0-7653-5473-X
Preceded by	Initial Vector

Perfect Dark: Second Front is a novel based on the Perfect Dark timeline. It is written by Greg Rucka and was released on January 9, 2007. It is the sequel to Initial Vector, and will be followed by a third novel.

[edit] Plot Summary

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

In the 3rd quarter of 2018, Zentek Corporation has been teetering on the edge of financial disaster. Zentek's CEO, Georg Bricker made the intention to cut the corporation's losses and allow dataDyne, the largest and leading hypercorp in the world, to perform a merger with his corporation. He seriously believed that dataDyne will be able to preserve Zentek's assets and interests but still allow the hypercorp to profit from its products. In January 2020, Bricker sent a worded letter to dataDyne's CEO Zhang Li of this intention, which Zhang Li immediately accepted his proposal and prepared for the inevitable merge between the 2 corporations. When Zhang Li and Mai Hem died during the events in Perfect Dark Zero, the merger was postponed indefinitely, and with Core-Mantis OmniGlobal (CMO) and Beck-Yama International (BYI) circling his corporation, waiting to make a forced takeover.

In the present, Bricker attends his corporation-sponsored celebrity's concert when he receives a message from Cassandra DeVries, the new CEO of dataDyne, wanting to discuss the continuation of the merger. DeVries sends Joanna Dark(?) to pick him up and meet her at Olympia, where she's having an important meeting. Upon reaching somewhere unfamiliar, Bricker realizes it is a trap and "Joanna" is intending to kill him. The Z-sleeve, his company's special suit he is wearing fails to save him and as he tries to escape, "Joanna" catches up and kills him. During Bricker's failed escape, "Joanna" touched his Z-sleeve and the counter-agents from his suit stung her, only to reveal that "Joanna" was a facade and the killer was someone else entirely all along. The next morning, Zentek's vice-president announces Bricker's death as a terrible hiking accident, having found his body in the woods near Olympia, which CMO almost immediately begins a hostile takeover of Zentek's assets and dismantling of the hypercorp. Meanwhile Cassandra DeVries awakens from a nightmare and is whisked off from her new CEO accommodations by Anita Velez, the chief of security and her CORPSEC forces. Velez explains that Bricker is dead and dataDyne is on high-alert, prompting CORPSEC to send DeVries to a safehouse to secure her. DeVries believes Daniel Carrington, the leader of the Carrington Institute (CI) and her one-time secret lover, is out to get her and the rest of the hypercorps' CEOs by attempting assassinations.

Meanwhile, the real Joanna Dark is severely injured during a mole-hunt by one of Colonel Leland Shaw's Hawk mecenaries. She is transported by dropship along with Jonathan Steinberg, the chief of security at CI and its forces back to the Institute for operation. When they returned, the CI campus servers are being hacked by an outside source and Grimshaw, CI's computer whiz, is doing everything to stop the repeated intrusion attempts. Grimshaw also shows Carrington and Steinberg a video footage showing another Joanna escorting Bricker at the base of the dataDyne Spire while the real Joanna was fighting for her life from the Hawk mecenaries above the Spire at the same time. Carrington surmises that right now dataDyne, CMO and BYI are thinking that CI had assassinated Bricker and will be attacking CI campuses to root them out. In China, Chun Fan and her brothers and sisters, who make up the Continuity, make plans to continue framing Joanna and bring down DeVries as CEO of dataDyne. As it turns out, CMO has hired the Continuity to assassinate Bricker in order to perform the takeover of Zentek. Chun Fan was the one who disguised as Joanna using something called Chrysalis. She proposes another deal after getting CMO's payment. The Continuity has information to bring down BYI to its knees, but only if CMO hires them to do so. CMO's representative, Portia de Carcareas, goes off to discuss with CMO's directors. 2 days later, BYI's CEO dies from a massive heart attack and a woman that resembles Joanna is seen at the scene.

DeVries, in her New Zealand safehouse, receives the news on BYI CEO's death. She agrees with Velez's proposal to get rid of Joanna. Meanwhile, Joanna is refused by Carrington to allow her to leave the campus's premises. She then makes her escape with help from Steinberg in order to find out who framed her for the murders. At the same time, Chun Fan goes off to a bar and makes contact with leader of the Hawk mecenaries, Leland Shaw to strike out a deal. She gives Shaw a lot of money and tells him to look out for dataDyne coming to hire him again to kill someone in another 2-3 days time. She reveals that Jack Dark is Joanna's father and Shaw takes interest. DeVries gets very bad-tempered with all her work and Velez calms her down. She goes off to see Dr. Edward Ventura and the invention she's going to show to the world: AirFlow.Net 2.0, aka "Arthur", a self-thinking artificial intelligence, named after her dead brother from a car accident. She finds out from Ventura that right now "Arthur" lacks a sense of self and is a bit disappointed by the current results. She asks Ventura to continue working and refining "Arthur". Meanwhile, Joanna arrives in Mexico and heads straight for CMO's branch there to find out if they had anything to do with the murders of Zentek's and BYI's CEOs.

She goes directly into CMO's Mexico branch to ask for Portia de Carcareas, her first clue. At the same time, Ventura asks for technical help regarding "Arthur"'s behavioural sims to someone in a chatroom named Chyrsalis Blossom. Steinberg enlists Grimshaw without Carrington's knowledge of Joanna's absence to hack Carcareas' ThroatLink communicator, eavesdrop and record on her later conversation with Joanna when she meets her. Joanna meets Carcareas in a cafe at Veracruz, Mexico. She asks Carcareas who was the one that framed her for the murders, and Carcareas tells her it was the Continuity who did it, though Joanna is clueless about who they actually are. Before Carcareas can follow up with this information, CMO's local security forces informs her that a team of heavily-armed dataDyne Shock Troopers are on their way to their location. It turns out that Velez, under the orders of DeVries, has got wind of their position and are preparing Shock Troopers to kill them. During the fight, Carcareas and Joanna manage to escape using diversions and picked up by CMO's dropships, but not before Joanna suffers severe injuries yet again. Steinberg and Grimshaw lose the frequency for Carcareas' communicator during the fight and Joanna's whereabouts.

Carrington finds out about what Steinberg and Grimshaw are doing behind his back and asks for Joanna's whereabouts, which they truthfully don't know where. Steinberg relates to Carrington Joanna and Carcarea's conversation. While Carrington is pondering over who the culprit who did all these was, Grimshaw mentioned the Continuity, which shakens both of them in the process. Later, Carrington tells Steinberg that the Continuity is a group of adolescent hackers gathered by Zhang Li, specializing in cyber-espionage. They were responsible for some major "accidents" that allow dataDyne to takeover the involved corporations. Carrington goes on to say that the Continuity are not loyal to dataDyne, but only to their "father", Zhang Li. Meanwhile, Velez receives a reprimanding by DeVries over the failure of the Shock Troopers to assassinate Joanna. DeVries then contacts Leland Shaw for a new assignment for his Hawks to get rid of Joanna this time. She later comes into conflict with Velez over prioritizing attention over "Arthur" instead of going over the rest of the work she has to do.

Joanna awakens in CMO's Health and Healing Facility in Libya 2 days later. She finds out that her neck has been implanted with a ThroatLink communicator. Joanna later resumes her conversation with Carcareas about the Continuity before they were forcefully interrupted by the Shock Troopers earlier on. She doesn't understand why the Continuity is fixated on her and frame her for the murders. Carcareas reveals that CMO hired them to facilitate the takeovers of Zentek and Beck-Yama, but has no idea about the Continuity's interest in Joanna. Carcareas intends to help Joanna anyway she can, as CMO fears that the Continuity may topple them all the same just like the other hypercorps that did. But Joanna has to travel to China to search for answers by herself, as dataDyne has a much bigger presence than CMO has. Meanwhile, it is revealed that Chun Fan's brother, Ke-Ling used the nickname of Chrysalis Blossom to take advantage of Ventura and get to "Arthur"'s program and inserting glitched memory modules.

Joanna updates Steinberg on her current status from a public viewchat screen, but due to CMO's insertion of the ThroatLink, she has to communicate to him using notes. Joanna tells Steinberg that the Continuity wants to seek revenge on her since she killed Zhang Li and Mai Hem. Steinberg gives no further orders and tells her to call back in another three hours. Meanwhile, DeVries fires off Michael Long, the director for Public Relations and his present crew for trying to waste her time and humiliating her during the mock-up presentation for "Arthur"'s unveiling to the world. She puts Gabrielle Shepherd as the new director for PR. Velez informs her about unusual activity coming from the servers in the AI lab, but DeVries is too frustrated to care and instead briefs the director of Ellison Electronic Security on CMO's threat.

Joanna arrives in Ankara, Turkey to continue her journey from there to China. She enters a bar to get refreshments, and Carcareas gets on her nerve through Jo's ThroatLink by going through her father Jack Dark's public record. Joanna's argument with Carcareas is interrupted by Shaw, who introduces himself and says that he knew a lot about her father, as they were both brother Marines and served together. Shaw continues by saying that his team, has arrived to get Joanna to safety due to dataDyne's hit squads appearing in the area. Carcarea suspects he's lying about it, but Joanna agrees to go with him. It turns out to be a trap, as the Hawk mecenaries attempt to put her down with Tranq-7s as she steps down from her transport with Shaw. She tries to escape, but she is injured once again and tranquilized. Meanwhile, dataDyne announces January 29th-30th 2021 as the date for "Arthur"'s presentation and activation. Shaw later reports to DeVries over the supposed success of eliminating Joanna Dark. He also produces videos of the assassination, as well as floor plans for "Arthur"'s presentation venue which he claims found on Joanna's body. After Shaw leaves, DeVries questions Velez over her failure to ensure no leak to the classified info and therefore her overall safety. Velez suspects something's amiss with all the things that's been going on, but DeVries has had enough and fires her for her repeated failures.

Joanna wakes up in Zhang Li's mansion retreat and meets Chun Fan. She learns that Chun Fan was the one impersonating her, as well as tracking her movements, which made it easier since CMO implanted the ThroatLink. Chun Fan then escorts her to a welcoming party which she and her brother and sisters honor Joanna as the killer of the much hated "sister" Mai Hem, whom they had despised before and after her death because of unfair attention, and the killer of their beloved "father" Zhang Li, whom they want revenge meted out on Joanna. Chun Fan wants to engage Joanna in a DeathMatch fight that leaves only the victor alive. Joanna protests over disadvantages due to her injuries, and Chun Fan shoots her own stomach to make it even. Joanna is then forcefully escorted to change her look using the Chrysalis process. It is told through operation logs that Chrysalis nanomachines, which are able to change one's look and form, were discovered by Zhang Li during his quest for the Graal. Later, he hired Hawk mecenaries to sanitize the Chrysalis researchers and erase any existence of the nanomachines, after he directed the project materials to his own premises. Chun Fan asks Shaw for one last assignment: to ensure that DeVries activates "Arthur" by pressing a switch and prevent any outside forces from stopping her.

DeVries inspects Ventura's progress with the AI, asks for a moment alone with it. She proceeds to weep at the loss of her guilt and conscience ever since she killed Dr. Friedrich Murray of pharmaDyne from the events in Initial Vector, and the assassination of Joanna Dark, and taking the position of dataDyne's CEO. Ventura forgets to turn the AI's audio off, and DeVries talks to it. "Arthur" gives a systems nominal "set minus one" when DeVries asks if it is ready to go online. She then tries to find out why there is "set minus one" in the system check, but gets repeated error messages in response. DeVries creates a new program called "Anita" and asks "Arthur" to open it when she tells him to. Meanwhile Joanna screams in pain from the Chrysalis process, and is shocked to see herself as the form of Mai Hem. Chun Fan intends to fight Joanna as "Mai Hem" in the DeathMatch VR for her hatred of her sister. Both of them connect into the DeathMatch program. Velez approaches Carrington Institute for help regarding danger to DeVries. Carrington surmises that the Continuity is intending to scramble up the dataDyne safety transponders in almost every vehicle in the world, when DeVries activates a glitched "Arthur". It will cause massive car crashes throughout the world, ending it as they know it. Carrington and Steinberg agrees to help Velez and the CI operatives and Velez's loyal CORPSEC security join forces temporarily to prevent the activation of "Arthur".

Meanwhile, Chun Fan manages to get the upper hand over Jo in DeathMatch, injuring her along the way with her martial art skills. Carcareas manages to communicate with Jo through the ThroatLink, helping her evade Chun Fan's moves. The communications link was discovered and disconnected, but not before Carcareas telling Jo to think of herself as Mai Hem when fighting Chun Fan. Jo takes Carcarea's advice and acts and fights recklessly like Mai Hem, much to Chun Fan's confusion and anger. Chun Fan loses her concentration and cannot fight properly. Jo endures the injuries Chun Fan dealt her in her panic. She gets close to Chun Fan and swipe her gun off her side, puts a gun to her head. Chun Fan remains confused and terrified and tells Joanna she isn't Mai Hem, which Jo comments that she looks like Mai Hem now, isn't it? She then puts a bullet through her head, killing her.

At the presentation venue, Steinberg's and Velez's forces split up and dispatch the Hawk mecenaries secretly. Steinberg climbs up and walks on the scaffolding to the stage where DeVries is in the process of intoducing "Arthur" to the invited guests. He comes down the curtains softly, but Shaw, acting as protection, has anticipated his presence and shoots him. Steinberg is injured and fumbles with his weapon, while Shaw takes Shepherd as hostage as the countdown for activating "Arthur" begins. Shaw pushes Shepherd away as a diversion and makes his escape, but Steinberg is unable to stop DeVries in time. When the countdown reaches one, DeVries says out the command "Anita", making "Arthur" shut down. She then orders Velez who has arrived to take Ventura into custody. Steinberg asks how DeVries knew about something going on and she remarks on Ventura's earlier speech about how no one with proper authorization would hack Arthur, which he was wrong. It was a denial, not a statement of fact, according to dataDyne's standards. She then tells Steinberg and the rest of the CI operatives to leave the premises, which they are glad to oblige, in three minutes before she'll have them shot.

More than a month later, Velez has found Shaw's location in Martinique, France and tells Jo and Steinberg, who have recovered from their injuries. It is learned that after Jo won the DeathMatch, CMO's forces arrived and picked her up. The forces then proceeded to kill off all the rest of the Continuity, even though Jo protested in her weakened state. In the present, Velez tells them she is doing this to return a favour to CI as they had helped her out. She mentions they are still enemies to her and dataDyne, which Steinberg tells her to leave before he decides to do something about that. Jo waits till midnight for Shaw to return to his room before she attacks him. Shaw comments on how she took so long to find him, and thinks that either she or Velez will kill him, which is on the mark. He begs Jo not to kill him, as he knew a lot about her father Jack Dark. He tries to strike a deal with Jo to let her know more about her father's past, but Jo says that he gave a daughter of a brother Marine to be tortured and put through the mess Chun Fan set for her. She says she knows enough about her father. After saying that, Jo kills Shaw.

In the aftermath, dataDyne covers up the non-functional AirFlow.Net 2.0 as an error localized in a third-party relay by contractors, and that the AI discovered it and halted the demonstration. dataDyne mentions that a secondary rollout of Version 2.0 will proceed as planned within 90 days. Core-Mantis OmniGlobal jumps in to compete with dataDyne with their introduction of their own program, SafeFlight 1.0. In the end, Carrington addresses an aeronautics assembly on how hypercorps are neglecting the quality and safety of their products like AirFlow.Net 2.0, concentrating only on their returns and profits. When some researchers from various hypercorps protest his statement, Carrington pledges to monitor both dataDyne's AirFlow.Net 2.0 and CMO's SafeFlight 1.0 projects, to ensure that the gift of flight is not tarnished by monopolistic corporate practices.