A very strange virus is spreading across the globe. Most people experience the illness as a mild flu, but the unlucky one percent of those infected—five million in the U.S. alone—develop cell syndrome. The victim of the virus remains conscious, sees and feels everything, but is unable to move and does not respond to external stimuli. The world, in order to be saved, was forced to change completely. Veteran agent Leslie Vann is partnered with Chris Shane, who has just started serving in the FBI. They are tasked with investigating a murder involving the Hadens, victims of Cage Syndrome. The main suspect is an integrator, a person capable of providing his body for use by the Hadens. If an integrator commits a murder while carrying someone else's consciousness, it is extremely difficult to find the real criminal... But in this case, the investigators are not so simple, because Leslie Vann is herself a former integrator, and Chris Shane is a disabled person who has been chained for many years to bed and capable of moving only in artificial bodies... A brilliant trilogy from a science fiction star, written in the best traditions of Isaac Asimov - for the first time in Russian!