The Emperial Metropolis is the scene of a dangerous game: teenage actors are used as toys in movies in which everything happens for real.

For Max Stranger, this means living in a trap. He never knows what might happen during his performance. Like other actors, he is sedated beforehand so that the filmmakers can turn on an artificial consciousness installed in a nanochip in his brain. The actors call this consciousness the Movie Character. When Max starts to play the role with his dormant mind, filmmakers send orders and impulses to the nanochip, forcing the Character to do everything that the script requires.

The worst scenario begins when Max and his girlfriend, Lara, are drawn by the ruthless autarch into a dangerous cinematographic experiment called the Seven Players series, which will be filmed in the outer mutant-infested wilderness and transmitted in real time on TV.

Death may be lurking at every turn out there. Anyone may die. Even the leading actor…