Search Worlds Without End

"Oh, Mrs. Sirman, there's a problem with your husband's cremation. It's his body. It won't burn."

And so it begins for Pam Sirman... the first step toward learning that everything she thought she knew about her husband is wrong, perhaps even his humanity. But if he's not human, what is he?

Pam is one of three lives that will be drawn together by the apocalypse of the Upwelling.

The other two are Chan and Danni, but their worlds are already in chaos. A few weeks ago a fierce storm accompanied by an upwelling from the Atlantic abyssal plain tore into Atlantic City. When it receded, the city and its 25,000 inhabitants were gone without a trace. Chan and Danni remember being in the city that day, but the ten hours during which the Upwelling occurred have been wiped from their memories.

They want those memories back. Or do they? Did they witness something so unspeakably ghastly that their minds can't face it? Or worse: Was that ghastly thing something they did? And worst yet: Were they responsible for the Upwelling?

The survivors of what has come to be known as The Catskill Cataclysm are not out the woods yet. As the last known members of The Hidden, they are marked for extermination. Their allies - Chan and Danni, and the Troika - are hunting them as well, but the Hidden do what they do best: hide.

Something new surfaces in the South Atlantic: a Manhattan-size iceberg. And embedded within it is a long lost Nazi U-boat. Back in the day, the Third Reich claimed part of Antarctica for its own. Was the sub on an exploratory mission? It carried a strange artifact that it was ferrying home when it was trapped in the ice. The bodies of the crew are perfectly preserved from the subzero temperatures... but they all were murdered.

Could the appearance of the sub have any relationship to the Catskill Cataclysm? Unlikely. But then, there are no coincidences.