At long last James Daly has gotten to UNC Chapel Hill, but every dream comes with a cost. James works for MJ-12, a covert agency that has fought extraterrestrial colonization since the 1940s, and now faces a threat much closer to home...

Now a junior, James is part of UNC Chapel Hill's ROTC program, a disguise for his real role serving in the secret war against the murderous alien Grays and, since the defeat of the Thing in the Woods and the battle beneath Atlanta a year ago, keeping watch for the predatory Kraken. Although he's achieved his childhood dream, there's trouble in paradise. His girlfriend, Amber Webb, won't move in with him and, more dangerously, a fellow MJ-12 agent has disappeared in a nearby town.

James' investigation alongside senior MJ-12 agent Thomas Bolton, whom he blames for the death of his best friend, results in an awful revelation. A creature spawned from the last underground nuclear tests has taken root, its telepathic powers a match for James' own strange talents. To find its missing agent, MJ-12 must do battle against fellow Americans infested with deadly parasites, a battle that could stretch the secret agency's capability to its very limits.