Count Zero is the second novel in William Gibson's Sprawl trilogy, set seven years after the events of Neuromancer. Bobby Newmark, a suburban hacker who calls himself Count Zero, is nearly killed on his first serious run into cyberspace — and saved by something that shouldn't exist. Turner, a mercenary who specializes in extracting corporate defectors, is hired by the Hosaka Corporation to pull a scientist out of a rival biotech firm, only to find himself responsible for the scientist's daughter instead. In Paris, disgraced art dealer Marly Krushkhova is recruited by a reclusive billionaire to track down the creator of a series of uncanny box sculptures reminiscent of Joseph Cornell's assemblages.
As their separate stories converge, all three are drawn toward the same unsettling truth: something has changed in the Matrix, and the old rules of corporate power and cyberspace no longer hold. Written in the terse, hard-boiled style that made Neuromancer a landmark of the genre, Count Zero expands Gibson's vision of a near-future world reshaped by multinational corporations, black-market technology, and a data network with a life of its own.