In Marbella, Spain, Dr. Kate Warner awakens to a horrifying reality: the human race stands on the brink of extinction. A pandemic unlike any before it has swept the globe. Nearly a billion people are dead—and those that the Atlantis Plague does not kill, it transforms at the genetic level. A few rapidly evolve. The remainder devolve. As the world slips into chaos, radical solutions emerge. Industrialized nations offer a miracle drug, Orchid, which they mass produce and distribute to refugee camps around the world. But Orchid is merely a way to buy time. It treats the symptoms of the plague but never cures the disease. Immari International offers a different approach: do nothing. Let the plague run its course. The Immari envision a world populated by the genetically superior survivors—a new human race, ready to fulfill its destiny. With control of the world population hanging in the balance, the Orchid Alliance and the Immari descend into open warfare. Now the last hope for humanity is to find a cure. Kate alone holds the key to unraveling the mystery surrounding the Atlantis Plague. The answer may lie in understanding pivotal events in human history—events when the human genome mysteriously changed. Her journey takes her across the barren wastelands of Europe and northern Africa, but it is her research into the past that takes her where she never expected to go. She soon discovers that the history of human evolution is not what it seems—and setting it right may require a sacrifice she never imagined.