From New York Times bestselling author James Rollins comes his first stand-alone novel in more than five years, combining his trademark elements of science, history, and breakneck suspense in a more streamlined narrative, with a stronger current events hook. During the battle for Baghdad, Republican Guards and the U.S. 3rd Infantry Division fight over the ruins of the Baghdad Zoo, opening the floodgates for the smuggling of hundreds of exotic birds, mammals, and reptiles to Western nations. One night, a rare baby gibbon mysteriously disappears from an Iraqi bioweapons research facility along with the chief scientist. Six years later, Texas state veterinarian Maura Kelly uncovers a ring of black market smugglers at the U.S. border carrying aberrant cargo a double-headed snake, a lion cub with saber teeth, a featherless Amazon parrot. While each animal seems to have a completely different mutation from the next, they all share one uncanny trait: super-intelligence. With U.S. Marshall Jack Menard and two neurobiologists on her side, Maura will uncover mysteries of fractal intelligence, stem cell research, and a secret history from the Book of Genesis to expose a horrifying secret that traces back to Biblical times. In the face of global terror and a genetic nightmare, Maura will have to risk all to survive, including the life of her unborn child.