<DIV><P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">This is the way the world ends:</P><P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">&nbsp;</P><P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">A nuclear strike on a deep sea vent.&nbsp; The target was an ancient microbe&#8212;voracious enough to drive the whole biosphere to extinction&#8212;and a handful of amphibious humans called rifters who&#8217;d inadvertently released it from three billion years of solitary confinement.</P><P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">&nbsp;</P><P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">The resulting tsunami killed millions.&nbsp; It&#8217;s not as through there was a choice: saving the world excuses almost any degree of collateral damage.</P><P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">&nbsp;</P><P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">Unless, of course, you miss the target.</P><P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">&nbsp;</P><P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">Now North America&#8217;s west coast lies in ruins.&nbsp; Millions of refugees rally around a mythical figure mysteriously risen from the deep sea.&nbsp; A world already wobbling towards collapse barely notices the spread of one more blight along its shores.&nbsp; And buried in the seething fast-forward jungle that use to be called Internet, something vast and inhuman reaches out to a woman with empty white eyes and machinery in her chest.&nbsp; A woman driven by rage, and incubating Armageddon.</P><P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">&nbsp;</P><P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">Her name is Lenie Clarke.&nbsp; She&#8217;s a rifter.&nbsp; She&#8217;s not nearly as dead as everyone thinks.</P><P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">&nbsp;</P><P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">And the whole damn world is collateral damage as far as she&#8217;s concerned. . . .</P></DIV>