On a serene summer Sunday, a routine admission for a run-of-the-mill surgery at Atlanta's Emory Hospital goes tragically wrong, setting off a catastrophic wave of destruction that sends the facility and the surrounding area into lockdown. One of the city's largest and most prestigious institutions, Emory is situated near the Centers for Disease Control, the FBI counter-terrorism headquarters, and a large children's hospital. Anything that happens there has repercussions for the entire city, the state of Georgia, and possibly the entire nation. A few miles away, medical examiner Sara Linton is enduring an awkward lunch with her mother, her aunt, and her boyfriend Will Trent, an agent with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. But the sudden wail of sirens blaring in the distance cuts the uncomfortable get-together short, drawing her and Will to the scene. Within an hour the situation at Emory has spiraled out of control--Sara has been taken prisoner and Will forced undercover, on a case in which thousands of lives are at stake. That "routine admission" at Emory was the opening maneuver in a perilous game of hunter and prey that leads him out of Atlanta into the Appalachians, to a remote compound where a radical group has hatched a diabolical plan for murder on a massive scale that will rock the nation if it isn't stopped.