Off the coast of Brazil, a team of scientists discovers a horror like no other, an island where all life has been eradicated, consumed, and possessed by a species beyond imagination. Before they can report their discovery, a mysterious agency attacks the group, killing them all, save one: an entomologist, an expert on venomous creatures, Professor Ken Matsui from Cornell University. Strangest of all, this inexplicable threat traces back to a terrifying secret buried a century ago beneath the National Mall: a cache of bones preserved in amber. The artifact was hidden away by a cabal of scientists<U+2014>led by Alexander Graham Bell<U+2014>to protect humankind. But they dared not destroy it, for the object also holds an astonishing promise for the future: the very secret of life after death. Yet nothing stays buried forever. An ancient horror<U+2014> dormant in the marrow of those preserved bones<U+2014>is free once more, nursed and developed into a weapon of incalculable strength and malignancy, ready to wreak havoc on an unsuspecting world.