Simon Mayo

6.45 a.m - London rush hour. And in the last 27 minutes, seven people have been murdered in a series of coordinated attacks. For journalist Famie Madden, the horror unfolds as she arrives for the morning shift. The victims have one thing in common: they make up the investigations team at the news agency where Famie works. As Famie starts to receive mysterious messages, she must find out whether she is being warned of the next attack or being told that she will be the next victim....

It starts quietly enough. A tick-tick-ticking you can hear in your ear. Tinnitus, you think. It will pass. But it doesn't. It gets worse - and then you pass it on.

Before you know it, it spreads. Elsewhere across the globe, it emerges: small outbreaks at ?rst, but then suddenly it's a plague - and only days later it is already killing people.

In an increasingly affected north London school, teacher Kit Chaplin is struggling to understand what he is witnessing. Even Lilly Slater, his partner and an eminent vaccinologist, can't work out what's happening. As it spreads, little by little, they are inexorably drawn into the mystery behind the illness. And what they discover will change the world as they know it...