When a raid on an insurgent safehouse reveals a clue to decoding the world's most mysterious manuscript—and possibly a recipe for creating the ultimate weapon of mass destruction—Delta operator Jack Sigler must forge a new black ops team to avert catastrophe, a team of deadly warriors with dangerous secrets—the Chess Team.

Imagine a world where soldiers regenerate and continue fighting without pause, and where suicide bombers live to strike again. This is the dream of Richard Ridley, founder of Manifold Genetics, and he has discovered the key to eternal life: an ancient artifact buried beneath a Greek inscribed stone in the Peruvian desert.

Mark Hawkins, former park ranger and expert tracker, is out of his element, working onboard the Magellan, a research vessel studying the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. But his work is interrupted when, surrounded by 30 miles of refuse, the ship and its high-tech systems are plagued by a series of strange malfunctions and the crew is battered by a raging storm. When the storm fades and the sun rises, the beaten crew awakens to find themselves anchored in the protective cove of a tropical island...and no one knows how they got there.

From the ashes of a devastated Boston, a harrowing legend emerges. Thirteen years prior, the colossal kaiju, Nemesis, ravaged the city in her relentless pursuit of retribution. Today, mankind's survival teeters on the sacrificial offerings atop a chilling monolith known as The Altar, where the condemned pay the ultimate price to prevent Nemesis's wrath from consuming humanity.

In the heart of the South Pacific lies Point Nemo, the most desolate and remote place on Earth. At its core is a dead zone, devoid of life, where government agencies crash their obsolete satellites and space stations, confident they won't harm a soul. When the International Space Station suffers a catastrophic failure and plummets through the atmosphere, it's here that Mission Specialist Julie Rohr, an astrobiologist studying living space dust called xylem, finds herself marooned. Julie's only hope for rescue lies in the hands of her estranged father, Dr. Finn Maddern, a renowned mycologist.