Find the missing. Fear the found. Three months have passed since the space fleet's arrival, but very little has changed in the skies above planet Earth. Motherships still hover without word, impervious to attack and communication. Spherical shuttles still ferry about, their intentions unclear. But the abductions of select humans have ended and most of those taken have been returned—dazed, incoherent, and prophesying glory or doom—but back home where they belong. All but nine. Worldwide, only nine seemingly unconnected people remain missing. Trapped in their besieged bunker outside Vail, Piper, Trevor, Lila, and Heather wait for one of them. All of this has happened before… For his entire life, Benjamin Bannister has sought the connections that unite the planet's wonders: Egypt's pyramids and Stonehenge, the Band of Holes in Peru and the Cambay Ruins. For years he's pursued evidence that extraterrestrial life is not new to Earth, but has left its footprints in the archeological records over and over again. For years, he was dismissed as a fool. But now the spheres have arrived and Benjamin has found his vindication … along with troubling theories as to what it all means. Benjamin's research facility rests on a paranormal hotspot in Moab, Utah—but Vail, Colorado is where his interests lie. He's sent an emissary to Meyer Dempsey's ranch to find the answer to a question: What makes the Missing Nine so special to the planet's silent invaders? What news will those Nine bring when they return? And what, as the motherships again begin to move like pieces finding positions on a chessboard, will happen next? …and it will all happen again. Vail and Moab, Moab and Vail—two epicenters in the cold alien war. The locations' fates (and the fates of those bunkered at each) seem somehow intertwined as Earth's clock ticks toward midnight. The roads and communications have been closed, but now it seems that the planet's future might depend on a journey from one to the other at all costs. Humanity must find the value of those who have been taken … or become mere fossil evidence for the archaeologists of the future to puzzle over. This relentless, page-turning tale of first contact is the second in the alien invasion series by masters of story Truant and Platt, authors of The Beam, Robot Proletariat, the Dream Engine series, and many more.