Dr. Lou Welcome never could have imagined what a sports injury would mean for his best friend, Cap Duncan. Surgeons manage to save Cap's shattered leg, but the open wound is the perfect breeding ground for a deadly microbial invader committed to eating Cap alive from the inside out. Meanwhile, hundreds of miles away, a teenaged girl is fighting for her life against the same microbe. The germ is resistant to any known antibiotic-and the government scientist tasked with finding a cure has been kidnapped. And time has already run out... "Of all [Palmer's] novels, this one has the most ambitious plot...and one of the best action scenes to ever appear in a medical thriller."-Associated Press Turning to the Centers for Disease Control for help, Lou uncovers a link to the Society of One Hundred Neighbors, a terrorist organization whose members are holding our own health institutions hostage. Like the microbe itself, One Hundred Neighbors will stop at nothing to further its agenda. Now, from the hospital corridors where anything you touch can mean your end to the top corridors of domestic power in this war against humanity, Lou must put an end to a terrifying epidemic-if it doesn't kill him first. "When it comes to inventive plots for medical thrillers, nobody does it better than Michael Palmer."-Huffington Post