Cooper Mitchell and Jeff Brockman partied hard to celebrate a job well done. Now, Cooper wakes up to find that things are breaking down, that the city of Chicago has become a most unwelcome place. Their former boss, Steve Stanton, has become something new. He is also in Chicago but will soon find himself embracing the Chicago carnage in a way very different from Cooper's.

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The United States government is distributing an inoculant to protect people against the coming infection, but are people willing to take it? Will they believe, and will they believe in time to make a difference? Margaret Montoya’s transformation reaches a critical phase, and in the Situation Room of the White House, Murray Longworth is a witness to the pending disaster.

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Dr. Tim Feely discovered that he could pinpoint infection outbreaks by looking for statistical spikes in the consumption of cough drops and other medications that treated the pathogen’s symptoms. While that worked in the small population of the Operation Wolf’s Head task force, he’s waiting to see how his model works with the population of the United States. SEAL team commander Paulius Klimas was forced to name one of his own as a subject of an inoculation experiment and will soon learn of the results of that experiment. And, In Chicago, Steve Stanton, Cooper Mitchell, and Jeff Brockman partied till the wee hours of the morning, celebrating a job well done. They will awake to a world that has already begun to change.

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The Mary Ellen Moffet has reached Chicago and brought with it a cargo of pending death. Back on Lake Michigan, Margaret Montoya is also caught up in a swirl of doom that threatens to drag her into hell. Her hallucinations of Perry Daswey are nightmares growing in urgency and intensity. Murray Longworth has become the President’s go-to man for this crisis — will proximity to the leader of the free world be enough for him to change the course of history? And Tim Feely might be the last person on the planet who can stop this carnage from happening.

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The Mary Ellen Moffet collected the piece of the Orbital, and in doing so, her crew was infected. Cooper, Jeff, Jose, Bo Pan, and Steve Stanton have all been exposed, and now are about to disembark in Chicago. Bo Pan is expecting Steve Stanton to deliver his data to the Chinese government, but Steve is terrified of what will happen to him after he does.

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Margaret is having vivid dreams bordering on hallucinations about one Scary Perry Dawsey. He’s talking to her in these dreams, but what is he trying to communicate to her? Bo Pan, the Chinese agent directing Steve Stanton, is still on the Mary Ellen Moffet as it steams toward Chicago. And way back in Book II, CONTAGIOUS, Margaret and Clarence Otto had a run-in with Dr. Cheng that turned into a power struggle. Margaret won that battle, but who will win this time?

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Steve Stanton’s robot submersible, the Platypus, went to the depths of Lake Michigan to retrieve part of the Orbital, but did it accidentally bring something else up with it? SEAL Commander Paulius Klimas and his team rescued Margaret Montaya from the pitched battle on the surface of Lake Michigan, but her ordeal is not over yet — she was exposed, and as such, she must be tested.

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When the Los Angeles attacked the Operation Wolf’s Head task force, hundreds of sailors died — and SEAL team commander Paulius Kilmas was ordered to stand by and watch, to not help in any way. Has the opportunity for him to become a player in this scenario finally arrived? Meanwhile, the Mary Ellen Moffet steams toward Chicago. Cooper Mitchell will finally be rid of Steve Stanton, Bo Pan, and the material recovered from the Los Angeles. The pending doom floating on Lake Michigan finally comes to a head…carnage abounds.

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Aboard the Mary Ellen Moffet, Cooper Mitchell is close to completing the job for Steve Stanton and Bo Pan — the robot submersible Platypus is returning from the wreck of the Los Angeles, and it carries with it a piece of the Orbital.  If the Moffet can collect the robot and the piece of Orbital, then the job is done. On board the Carl Brashears, Conroy Austin is unconscious as his body slowly changes into something else, something not human. And Tim Feely’s data-mining work is about to produce some very disturbing results.

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Orin Nagy’s rampage resulted in three more infected sailors. They are contained in the BSL-4 chambers on the USS Carl Brashears, but the new cases show the vector hovers on the edge of uncontrollable. Tim Feely’s yeast-based inoculant nears completion, but how will he test it as a defense against the infection? Meanwhile, Steve Stanton awaits contact from his robot submersible, the Platypus, knowing that if he doesn’t get a signal soon, Bo Pan might execute him.

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