In this fast-paced high-tech thriller, Austin-based hacktivst Tom Ayana is already an infamous flash-mob impresario known as "Swarm" when experimental software code is leaked to him from the Defense Department. Tom's enhanced neuro-abilities and his encounter with the shadowy Meta Militia propel his online alter ego into becoming "the elusive alpha that controls the hive mind" with transformative and potentially lethal effects. As Swarm pursues his quest to jumpstart the next phase of human evolution, he becomes the target for Jack Duggan-a Homeland Security cyber-investigator with a reputation for going rogue. Duggan risks his career to untangle a web of corruption and betrayal that reaches from a military atrocity in Afghanistan and an Edenic video game virtual world to the highest echelons of U.S. government. Duggan soon enlists biologist Cara Park to help him stop Swarm before he ignites a crowd-sourced insurrection with the power to shatter the status quo and rewrite the rules of democracy.