A month ago, the supernova Aeon detonated in the skies over Antarctica. Global sea levels rose by five feet, temperatures by ten degrees. A mass human and animal exodus to the north is underway even as the global electronics and power and communications grids have been destroyed.

Max Carver made it back to America in time to be with Talisha and witness the birth of their child, Charlotte, but he was unsuccessful in stopping Ben Belloc from leaving the Amazon with the Colony technology. Rumors surface that Ben has landed in Louisiana, in the town Max and Ben grew up in together. Strange stories begin circulating of fantastic creatures inhabiting the Mississippi delta as humans evacuate to the north.

Dr. Xin Rhou managed to escape the Antarctic continent with a prize greater than she could have imagined, but the cost of her victory was catastrophic even as she gets exactly what she wanted. On her return, as perhaps the most famous person in the world as the discoverer of Aeon, she is nominated to become the new head of the United Nations Global Protectorate, tasked with the almost unbelievable goal of building a magnetic shield to protect Earth from the plasma wall of Aeon's detonation which will hit the planet in thirty years.

The key to this compelling goal and securing the future of the planet, however, hinges on the newly formed UNGP getting full access to the Colony technology, as well as stopping the growing threat from the new lifeforms evolving deep in the Mississippi Delta. Dr. Xin Rhou, now President of the UNGP, appeals to Max Carver to go on one last mission to finally stop his old friend.

And so Max together with his Charlie recon squad of Bull, Ginvera Garza, Susanna Sorenson, Fred Saberhager and Dr. Iona Alcott, get on a fast attack boat in the northern alliance state of Missouri and begin to descend down to the Mississippi into the deep south under the glowing ball of Aeon growing in the southern skies.