A global phenomena called Symborg threatens civil stability and public order in dozens of countries. A robotic messiah has appeared, hugely popular with millions. Symborg embodies a new cult called the Assimilationists. The Red Harmony cartel has piggy-backed on this phenomenon to gain new customers for their halos and drugs. The UN is faced with a crisis, as hundreds of thousands of followers willingly allow themselves to be deconstructed in an insane desire to merge with Symborg and his mother swarm.
Symborg has to be stopped. Quantum Corps and Johnny Winger are given a mission to infiltrate Symborg's inner circle and corrupt the angel, so that he can't perform in public. But one disgruntled quantum trooper, Stella D'Garza, has become a double agent, working for Red Harmony inside the Corps, providing intelligence. D'Garza is instructed to sabotage Winger's mission, even as she outwardly works within the Corps' operation to infiltrate Symborg's circle.
Detected and arrested by the Corps, D'Garza is forced to assume multiple identities, as a trooper for Quantum Corps and a deeply embedded agent for the cartel. Torn between loyalties, given a job of protecting Symborg during an upcoming rally in New York and bearing an internal halo to keep her subservient to the cartel, D'Garza faces the hardest choice of her life. Will she submit to the dictates of her cartel halo and sabotage the Quantum Corps operation? Or will she overcome her fears and the halo to fall back on years of training as an atomgrabber and years of loyalty to Johnny Winger?
Her decision shocks everyone.
Ninth episode in the Quantum Troopers Return serial.