Maelstrom (Rifters Trilogy, 2)
<p>This is the way the world ends:</p><p>A nuclear strike on a deep sea vent. The target was an ancient microbeۥvoracious enough to drive the whole biosphere to extinctionۥand a handful of amphibious humans called rifters who'd inadvertently released it from three billion years of solitary confinement.</p><p>The resulting tsunami killed millions. It's not as through there was a choice: saving the world excuses almost any degree of collateral damage.</p><p>Unless, of course, you miss the target.</p><p>Now North America's west coast lies in ruins. Millions of refugees rally around a mythical figure mysteriously risen from the deep sea. A world already wobbling towards collapse barely notices the spread of one more blight along its shores. And buried in the seething fast-forward jungle that use to be called Internet, something vast and inhuman reaches out to a woman with empty white eyes and machinery in her chest. A woman driven by rage, and incubating Armageddon.</p><p>Her name is Lenie Clarke. She's a rifter. She's not nearly as dead as everyone thinks.</p><p>And the whole damn world is collateral damage as far as she's concerned. . . .</p>