Two years later, an avalanche in the Himalayas puts nine strangers in a cave that should not be there. What they find beneath it raises their minds past anything human, and gives one of them a passenger.
The device that keeps Martin Orchard's damaged brain working is the same device that lets Rangda into it. He understands this perfectly. He puts it back in every time.
What follows takes him from a Manhattan hotel room to a lake bed in Peru, from a Colombian valley to the tunnels under Jerusalem, always one job from being free of her and never once free. He wins a fortune, loses a wife, and pays for every step with somebody else's life. And in South Africa a girl grows up who was born nine months after twenty minutes he has never admitted to anyone.
The world ends in 2131. He will not be there to see it.
He means to decide what it looks like anyway.