From the very start, Dr. Carroll Monks knows that the businessman dumped from a limousine in the parking lot of Mercy Hospital isn't a typical San Francisco junkie. Even after Monks rushes the dying man inside and brings him back from the precipice of a heroin overdose - after the danger has, seemingly, passed - Monks senses that something more sinister is brewing.

Just how sinister, he couldn't have guessed. First a phalanx of lawyers and doctors descends on the hospital and whisks the man away before Monks can find out more about the suspicious circumstances surrounding his arrival. Then a small fire breaks out in the hospital - an act of sabotage that results in the disappearance of the man's blood samples.

But the real shock comes the next morning, when the newspapers report the mysterious disappearance of billionaire Lex Rittenour. Rittenour, a beloved computer wunderkind, has long been rumored to be developing a top-secret technology involving the human genome, the medical applications of which have the potential to place his name alongside those of Lister, Curie, and Salk. Now, just days before the unveiling of his breakthrough, Rittenour - whom Monks recognizes as the man he saved in the ER the night before - has, according to his corporate spokesmen, "gone into seclusion.

What begins for Monks as an inquiry into Rittenour's disappearance unearths something far more diabolical - the horrific facts behind genetic research done in Rittenour's name - and pits him against a corporation of dubious ethics, ruthless commando-style tactics, and a multibillion-dollar motivation to protect its dark secrets.