An eerie room is found far below the surface of the Old Town in Stockholm after three men are infected with a mysterious disease. A strange fossil is discovered in a valley in Colorado. During a record heat wave the disease begins to spread all around the world.
From Swedish author U.D. Sandberg comes a novel about nature's power over Man, faceless terror and Mankind's place in world history.
Three men are quarantined when they are infected by an unknown virus working in a sinkhole in the Old Town of Stockholm. On a visit to Stockholm, American epidemiologist Noah Chandler investigates the outbreak and finds a room at the bottom of the sinkhole which they suspect is the reservoir for the virus but uncertain in what way. The room is strange: its far below the surface, built out of an unknown material not found in the surrounding rock and it is impossible that nature could have created it.
The quarantine fails when an infected person escapes. Soon other similar cases emerge, the number of infected explodes and the millions of interactions between people every day make the pandemic impossible to stop and track.
Noahs wife Katherine and their daughter Amelia are stuck in Minnesota. After years of drought forest fires on the coasts are left uncontrolled when most firefighters are infected. The fires force a large part of the population toward the center of the country. Millions are sick and society is rapidly falling apart around them as Katherine and Amelia try to avoid people and race through the country to their home in Virginia.
Noah's investigation leads to a valley in Colorado where they find a T. Rex skeleton whose stomach contains an unfamiliar fossil. In an unexplored cave system beneath the fossil they find something unimaginable. They have more questions than answers about the origin of the virus when the world is heading toward collapse.