Five years after the events of Maelstrom, North America's corporate elite is hiding from chaos and epidemics at the deep-water Atlantis station, where it has to dwell side by side with rifters, people adapted to life at great depths. Former enemies united in fear of the outside world, but he did not forget about them and longs to call everyone to account. The inhabitants of the station do not yet know that their truce with each other can turn into a full-scale war, that the microbe itself, destroying all life on the surface of the Earth, has changed and become even more deadly, and on land power now belongs to real monsters, both real and virtual. But in the midst of horror and anarchy, hope appears - a medicine that can heal not only people, but the entire biosphere of the Earth. But won't it be worse than any disease?