You put your mask on as you wander through the toxic fog, fluorescent tubes kept ablaze 24/7 � enough light to attract customers, not enough to really cut through the soup. For that, your cyber-optics click into "Fog mode" to at least make out the haziest of details. Cafe Voltaire � it must be around here somewhere. That's what the wukd-eyed hacker said in the Central Park graveyard anyway, while keeping his machine pistol leveled "against bloodsuckers" in the darkness. You thought he was another sufferer of Hopkins-Brie Ontology Syndrome: just another poor sap who can't tell real and virtual reality apart. But then his buddy Xandro handed you a stake without a trace of irony on his face. "A bloodsucker come after you," he said. "You slam this into its heart real violent-like." Meditating on the quaint usefulness of hard wood in an age of neural blasters and plastic decking units, you stumble down Canal St. and see the flashing pyramid indicating the way to Cafe Voltaire. Cyberspace calls and, as you make your way down the wet stairs, you try to push out of your mind the half-gurgled cry for help you just heard from the alleyway nearby�

Manhattan 2094. The world is in the grip of an information dictatorship held by TransTechnicals. "Imagine," write John Antinori and Laura Kampo in the BloodNet manual, "the phone company, an international bank, a software giant and the CIA merged into one entity, and you begin to understand the scope and magnitude of TransTech's power." Cyberspace only operates through its strict governance, and all major databases are accessed only with TransTech's consent. Most citizens acquiesce to their rule, based on the meager scraps of food and data they're tossed every now and then � after all, the people in charge got there based on talent and hard work. That's what democracy looks like, right?

Meanwhile, underground organizations of hackers and freelancers daily skirt the fringes with their activities: drug-running, black market deals, copyright infringement, data mining, identity theft, unlicensed healthcare� you name it, they're in on it. TransTech cuts off cyberspace access or sends out a goon squad now and then. But at least the fringe is one way to survive outside the suffocating confines of the System.

Now throw in the vampires. New Yorkers have recently become prey to a new generation of humankind's most ancient enemy. Not only are they clever and enhanced with the technologies of the day, but they're hungry. And, believe it or not, they're also in charge. For now.