In “Defiant”, Ell Donsaii, her husband Shan Kinrais, and their friend Gary Pace begin working on commercialization of the carbon allotrope technology they learned about in “Allotropes”. Also, new uses, both beneficial and dangerous are being found for her ports. These wormholes aren’t big enough to send people through, yet they make possible technologies that have created huge changes in our world. Those changes have resulted in tremendous economic and political upheavals. The political disturbances bring Edith Stockton to Presidential power, a woman who despises Ell and who is being stroked in that direction by individuals who want the secrets of Ell’s highly dangerous ‘one ended ports.’ Stockton imprisons Ell in an effort to extort the one ended port technology from her and Ell, having determined that she cannot release that particular secret, must decide how to respond.