When identical twins working for a Las Vegas casino are found murdered, FBI agent Roland Ingram's investigation reveals that both women were patients in a clinical trial involving nanotech-powered drug delivery. Because of her experience in pharmaceutical development, Dr. Dani Hunter, a brilliant but intense postdoctoral fellow with a dark past, becomes Ingram's reluctant partner. Demonic in form, the lure of the weapons potential of this same nanotechnology is far too great for rival governments to resist. It attracts a Saudi sheik and the U.S. Defense Department, both determined to acquire the power for unnervingly similar purposes. As the global struggle for control begins, a phantom killer from San Francisco's past claims responsibility for the murders, sending the city into turmoil days before the Democratic Convention is to begin. A sensational murder and a startling realization lead to a race to prevent the technology, and whoever controls it, from creating human cybernauts programmed to kill. Selective genetic targeting-the targeting of a race or an individual by its unique genetic pattern, and, ultimately, the extinction of a race by sterilization-is the end game for those bent on the destruction of civilization. The game begins here.