Tri-meserone: a new drug that allows athletes to surpass all previous record-breaking levels of performance, without exhaustion or pain. And it's undetectable — apart from the side-effects. The BUGS team is called in when several of a gym's best sportsmen have suddenly collapsed; they uncover a plot to create an army of supermen. Ros is forced to run for her life, and Ed and Beckett are blown up.

Pulse weapons don't kill; they wipe computer memory. A criminal genius could become the wealthiest man in the world if he owned the small companies that make pulse bomb components and which would grow were the data banks of the worlds multinational corporations to crash simultaneously. Ros launches a missile; Beckett's prisoner in a playpen; Ed's trying to save an eight-year-old computer game prodigy. Can they possibly stop the criminal masterplan?