The passion to create life: The In-Vitro Fertilization unit of the Women's Clinic, Massachusetts. An establishment at the cutting edge of new reproductive technologies. The power to destroy it: But the clinic is just the tip of a global network. Within its stark walls lurks a chilling conspiracy. Its business - control over life. Its reward - not babies, but dollars. Billions of dollars.....

After losing his ophthalmology practice to AmeriCare, a giant conglomerate, and then his wife and two daughters in an airline tragedy, Dr John Stapleton's life is reduced to Ashes. He re-trains in forensic pathology and moves to the cold, indifferent, concrete maze of New York. There Stapleton believes himself past caring - yet his suspicions are aroused as virulent and lethal illnesses begin to strike the young, the old and the virulent regardless.