Book One The year is 2025. A techhead terrorist group called the Anarch has unplugged the world. While the globe struggles to get out of the darkness, a chemist, Dr. Mikale Warres—bitter about his dismissal from one of the world’s most successful corporations, Emerge Tech—unleashes a plague that turns human organs to ash. He hopes to wipe out the population and restart it. Only one scientist, Dr. Foster Ashby, can find the cure. He’s been searching for it, but it remains just out of reach. Warres knows Foster is close to stopping his plans for the globe and decides Foster must die. Immediately. Officer Darina Lazitter is assigned to protect Foster after he takes too long in the city getting samples of Warres’s disease. The job is simple—get Foster safely back behind Emerge Tech’s walls. Shielding him from her heart, however, is proving harder than shielding him from the enemy.