
The hackers flee the building just before a fire causes the stored explosives to detonate, collapsing the building. In the subsequent gun battle, Ivanov kills Peter, and Abdallah Jones, the head of the Islamist cell, kills Ivanov. The Russian team prepares to raid the apartment, only to be misdirected by Zula into a random apartment, which coincidentally happens to house Islamic terrorists preparing to bomb an international trade conference. Upon arriving in China, Peter, Zula, and Sokolov (a former Spetsnaz security consultant hired by Ivanov) locate the virus creators' apartment. Ivanov, a senior gangster behind the deal, tracks Peter down and coerces him and Zula to help him find the virus creators in Xiamen, China. The transaction inadvertently results in a T'Rain-based ransomware virus infecting the contact's laptop and rendering the only copy of the database useless. Desperate for money, Peter sells a database of stolen credit card numbers to a shady contact, who is in fact working for the Russian mob. Zula Forthrast, an adopted Eritrean, is given a job by her billionaire uncle, Richard "Dodge" Forthrast, at his company, Corporation 9592, which runs an MMORPG called "T'Rain." Zula and her boyfriend, Peter, visit Richard's cat-skiing resort.

Topics covered range from online activities including gold farming and social networking to the criminal methods of the Russian mafia and Islamic terrorists. The story, set in the present day, centers on the plight of a hostage and the ensuing efforts of family and new acquaintances, many of them associated with a fictional MMORPG, to rescue her as her various captors drag her about the globe. Reamde is a technothriller novel by Neal Stephenson, published in 2011.
