#1 New York Times bestselling author James Rollins delivers a masterful epic that combines timeless mystery and ripped-from-the-headlines scientific intrigue.

A military research station buried in the remote Sierra Nevada Mountains of Northern California broadcasts a frantic distress call that ends with a chilling order: "There's been a breach. Failsafe initiated. No matter the outcome: Kill us . . . kill us all."

When park ranger Jenna Beck arrives with her search-and-rescue dog Nikko to investigate, they discover that all of the scientists in the lab are dead and every living thing for fifty square miles is annihilated: animals, plants, insects, even bacteria. The land is completely sterile--and the blight is spreading.

Only one team on earth has the scientific knowledge and military precision to handle this mission: Commander Gray Pierce and Sigma. As Pierce and his team race to decipher millennia-old secrets, they face their greatest challenge yet: stopping the sixth extinction--the end of humankind.