Security knocks at the door and Irith Hardey's world is torn apart.Her mother, Jemma, is arrested for an unspecified crime and disappears. Irith, a young gene researcher, is thrown onto the streets. With nothing but the clothes on her back, she fights to survive in a cruel and predatory world. The sexually inexperienced Irith soon falls prey to the mysterious Bragg. He spirits her away to a Britain slowly collapsing under the sanctions of the Global Congress. There she is flung into a violent battle between Security and a cabal of rebels, only to find herself caught up in the rebels' underground assault on a Congress data centre. They steal files containing the code for a deadly terminator virus, but no one can decipher it.
Hunted through the flooded tunnels under the London Docklands, the group flees to New Orleans, slowly drowning under the rising seas, to destroy the laboratory where the virus is being made. As the hurricane of the century bears down on the sinking city, Irith struggles to crack the secret of the virus before it wipes out all humanity.
