Maelstrom - Rifters Trilogy Author:Peter Watts This is the way the world ends: A nuclear strike on a deep sea vent. The target was an ancient microbe?voracious enough to drive the whole biosphere to extinction?and a handful of amphibious humans called rifters who?d inadvertently released it from three billion years of solitary confinement. The resulting tsunami killed millions. It?s not as... more » through there was a choice: saving the world excuses almost any degree of collateral damage. Unless, of course, you miss the target. Now North America?s west coast lies in ruins. Millions of refugees rally around a mythical figure mysteriously risen from the deep sea. A world already wobbling towards collapse barely notices the spread of one more blight along its shores. And buried in the seething fast-forward jungle that use to be called Internet, something vast and inhuman reaches out to a woman with empty white eyes and machinery in her chest. A woman driven by rage, and incubating Armageddon. Her name is Lenie Clarke. She?s a rifter. She?s not nearly as dead as everyone thinks. And the whole damn world is collateral damage as far as she?s concerned. . . .« less