ISBN 0-684-82245-8 (US trade pbk)

"Elena Hausmann arrived in Grand Central Station at precisely 9:37 P.M., September 3, in the Eight Year of the Empire. Disembarking from an Alpha-type train, she found herself alone on the polished tile walkway at an hour when she would have expected the station to be bustling with citizens... The echoing silence of the station had begun to remind her of the vast archives where she spent her life.

"So begins Elena's journey into a dark landscape of totalitarian rule and paranoia, a place where time, truth, and memory can be manipulated by men and machines. Once a privileged member of the ruling class, she now belongs to the Underground, a group determined to overthrow the dictatorship of Paolo Orlovsky. But nothing in her experience can prepare her for what will happen when she meets the spectral child, whose silence may hold the answer to many mysteries and, indeed, the future of her world.

"Set in the fantastic world of the best-selling CD-ROM, Gadget, The Third Force is a compelling story of power, intrigue, and apocalypse, a dark ride through a disturbing vision of reality." [jacket blurb, US trade pbk, 1996]