Driven from Atlantis by the psychological disease a-max, Lenie Clarke searches for redemption on land. She and former spy Lubin hijack traveling medic Taka Oulette's mobile infirmary and discover that someone is shooting germs that the North American defense grid is destroying via containment burns. When Lenie and company get a sample, however, the germs seem to cure aehemoth, and the three start spreading them by courier. Then defense chief Achilles Desjardins shows up and tells them the germs are actually a more virulent strain of aehemoth. This is technically true, but Desjardins has reason to dissemble. Believing him, though, Lenie, Lubin, and Oulette split up to find their couriers, and Lenie finds one apparently in late-stage aehemoth, who then completely recovers. Desjardins isn't the hero Lenie had taken him to be, and still, there is hope for the world, after all.