So what’s a C.R.I.S.P.R.? Krista Everett was a seismologist by profession. She didn’t know what a C.R.I.S.P.R. was either, not until she discovered her husband’s journal hidden in the Ixtapa, Mexico hotel room safe. C.R.I.S.P.R. stands for Clustered regularly-interspaced short palindromic repeats. Okay … not helpful. It’s a researcher designed genetic splicing engine made by coupling a length of bacterial RNA to a viral enzyme. It precisely snips and replaces nearly any DNA segment. Better?
The story begins two weeks ago when her husband Russell came home from work with news of a new assignment and a proposition: Take a long overdue, all expenses paid vacation in Ixtapa, Mexico while he consults on a special project aboard the research ship Phoenix that has put into port at the Ixtapa Marina That was the story then …
Shortly after arriving Krista meets Henri, hotel falconer and his falcon Voltan, they’re paid to keep the hotel campus clear of nuisance birds. He and Voltan will soon play a crucial role as the saga unfolds.
From Russ’s secret journal Krista learns Russ was really here to stop a mutated C.R.I.S.P.R. epidemic that escaped containment and was spreading among the Phoenix staff and crew. It implicates him with a rogue research group unencumbered by ethics and unimpeded by governmental oversight. Its disregard for standard protocol threatens all life on Earth as we know it.
Even as she reads the journal, the forces of nature are conspiring to vastly worsen the problem. While Russ was at the Marina, a massive earthquake shakes Ixtapa to its foundations. As a trained seismologist Krista knows what’s coming and tries to warn hotel staff and guests but to no avail. She meets Henri on the beach and race to the higher ground safety of her fifth floor hotel room just in time to watch a massive 60 foot tsunami swamp the Ixtapa coast.
The cell towers on the hills above Ixtapa are still intact and Krista contacts her Brother Andre, CEO of a medical equipment company and her Sister Yvette, a Pentagon Air Force flight nurse to tell them what’s happened and that her husband Russ is missing. Each has the ways and means to visit the devastated region and help their sister.
While Krista is helping in the local relief efforts she finds Russell’s diary. She doesn’t know the chief architect of the secret research effort, Dr. Dennis Walsh, has arrived aboard the Phoenix’s sister ship Phoenix II. or that the project’s chief financial backer, drug lord Ricardo Salvador has arrived on his ship, Patron. Neither are here to join in the rescue effort. They’ve come in search of Batch 357 containing the seeds of contagion and the keys to cure every disease of the human condition … including death itself.
Andre and Yvette arrive in Ixtapa, find their sister and learn of the contagion. They find the tsunami has swept the Phoenix inland. With Henri and Voltan as guides, Krista, Yvette and Andre trudge through the tortured landscape to the wreck and discover they are not alone. Scientists and underworld investors are also converging to find B-357 samples and destroy evidence of their criminal involvement. They also encounter victims of the C.R.I.S.P.R. plague at the wreck site, including Krista’s husband transformed into another entity. He and other mutated survivors join the fight to defeat of the unscrupulous developers and backers of B-357 and a cure to the C.R.I.S.P.R. plague.
Staarbaads Universe 