Hal is a 15-year-old high-school student with a minor yet socially alienating (and painful) disability: he stutters uncontrollably. Determined to work through the problem, Hal opts for an extreme route – he joins the school debating team, which sends him on a headfirst plunge into breakneck speech competitions and offers a much-needed boost toward correcting the problem.

Angela Bennett is a freelance software engineer who lives in a world of computer technology. When a cyber friend asks Bennett to debug a new game, she inadvertently becomes involved in a conspiracy that will soon turn her life upside down and make her the target of an assassination.