Dr. Isobel Fallon thinks she's found a treatment that will help her son and others suffering from Milani Syndrome, a rare neurological disorder. What she doesn't realize is that harvesting the source of this treatment in the only accessible place on earth it grows, a coral reef in the Nlaan Islands, is going to have consequences far beyond the disruption of the fragile ecosystem on one small reef.

CDC researcher Nadine Parker and her team are baffled. Lukas Behn's daughter Kyndra has contracted a bizarre new virus that leaves her screaming in pain. But they can't identify any physical, biological source for that pain, not in Kyndra, nor in the dozens, then hundreds, and finally millions of children worldwide succumbing to the same virus. And no one seems to have made a connection between what's happening with the infected children and the events on a small coral reef in the South Pacific.

Eventually, Nadine has to face the unlikely truth, and the enormous implications of it. The children aren't sick, they're changing. But will anyone else believe her?