An alien ship crashed into Alaska’s Mendenhall Glacier 150,000 years ago and froze within the ice...until glacial melting thawed out its deadly inhabitants in the present day. Kai and Jules Bevins, both professors of astrobiology at Caltech, are roused from their home and whisked away to the site where a special division of the army has taken charge. But not before something escaped through a breach in the hull. Thousands of miles away in Pakistan, the Nine --- a team of superbeings placed on Earth a million years ago by intergalactic colonizers that seeded our planet to create human life --- are lifted from their long slumber. This all leads to a confrontation on a volcanic island that will determine the fate of civilization, even as the Nine uncover the shattering truth behind their own tragic paths and learn of a much greater battle to come.