Winner of the 2004 Salvo Press Mystery Novel of the Year Award

Deep within a heavily guarded compound of the Brookhaven National Laboratory lies the nation's most
protected secret: an active alien artifact. Estimated at several millions of years old, impervious to all
efforts to penetrate its secrets, the artifact taunts researchers with bursts of mysterious radiation that
may be efforts at communication.

Now, after two researchers conducted unauthorized experiments on it, something has awakened inside,
something as old as time, wielding incalculable power and an agenda of doom. While America's military
struggles against an impossible power, only a twelve-year-old crippled computer hacker and an aging
police detective hold the key to the artifact. But they must overcome disbelieving authorities in a desperate
race against time, with the very survival of humanity in the balance.

Patrick Cullen, a native of Massachusetts, is a graduate of The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., where he continues to live and work in the theater.