When 23-year-old Micah McGrath suddenly finds himself thrust into a dangerous and ugly future after a lab accident, his only choice is to try and make the best life for himself that he can. But when the secret police get wind of his research into time travel, he soon becomes a virtual prisoner, forced to continue his work on behalf of ruthless captors who wouldn't hesitate to eliminate him the moment he becomes inconvenient. After a desperate escape attempt fails, Mike is faced with the brutal choice of near-certain death, or of abandoning everything he loves forever.

In the year 2154, sixteen year old Tycho McGrath is an advanced genetics student at the prestigious John Brooke Academy in Tampa. Life seems fairly dull, until he accidentally discovers that in less than a week, a recently designed bacterium known as the Orion Strain will almost certainly wipe out every human being on earth. Tycho and his friends quickly form a desperate plan to steal an experimental spacecraft and flee to the partially-terraformed Moon, hoping to ride out the plague till it's safe to come home. But the survivors of Earth soon discover that the Moon has its own dangers. Horrific storms, radiation poisoning, and mutant insects all lie in wait, and worst of all, the betrayal of one of their own. Can Tycho and the others find their way back home, or will they be trapped forever on the dying Moon?

After an unusual energy surge reveals their presence, Tyke and the other survivors find themselves attacked by an aggressive and ruthless group of military colonists who escaped from Earth just before the plague. Determined to get the secret of Tyke's Orion Strain vaccine so they can return to take over the world, they are prepared to do whatever it takes to force the information out of him. The survivors soon find themselves locked in a bitter struggle over the future of humanity, and over who will inherit the Earth after all.

What begins as a simple mission to recover lost comrades in the Martian desert quickly turns deadly as Tyke and the others find themselves stranded on the Red Planet, with only the slimmest of chances to ever make it home.