After Death – Dean Koontz

Michael Mace is one of fifty-five people working at Beautification Research, a company ostensibly involved in beauty products research, but secretly researching the effect of nanotech modified Archaea on the human body. The research is funded by the federal government and two large tech companies. A lab leak exposes everyone at the lab to the last iteration of the nano-particle development, and all fifty-five die in the locked down facility. And all stay dead. Except Michael.
His body, reacting uniquely to the nanotech, doesn’t just revive after being clinically dead, but revives with new capabilities that leave him constantly connected to the internet. Through electromagnetic waves interacting with the nanostructures in his body, he is now able to take advantage of online resources instantly, just by thinking about them. No computer or other device needed; he is the device. And his internet perusal has no limits. He can go behind any firewall, invade any network, search any files, even if encrypted or hidden. He has, in short: the ability to access almost instantaneously, anything, anywhere that is on the internet. He can research whatever he wants to research; hack and alter whatever data he wants to hack.
Michael realizes that he has become the “most wanted fugitive in “history’ for multiple reasons. His unique abilities are of extreme interest to the “powers that be”, both in industry and the government. They can imagine scores of useful applications, and if he is captured alive, he will spend the rest of his life as nothing more than a lab rat, detained in isolation for study, or worse. If caught, any hope of being treated like a human being and living a free life again are null. More importantly, though, Michael is a threat on multiple fronts. He, as living proof, could publicize what they are doing and bring down their enterprise as a whistleblower, as a litigant for damages to himself. But what they fear most is that he will stay out of the public view, and use his new-found power against them directly. They want him controlled or dead.
The federal government, acting through the ISA, the Internal Security Agency, assigns Calaphas, their most sociopathic, cold blooded killer agent to track Michael down and eliminate him.
Mike resigns himself to a life on the run, and resolves to use his newfound powers to fight evil, expose corruption, and do good wherever he can.
Mike’s best friend since childhood, Shelby Shrewsberry, is one of the fifty-four at Beautification Research who died and stayed dead. In tribute to Shelby, Mike resolves to look up and help out Nina, a single mother that Shelby was enamored with. Tina, however, is also being pursued by a threat to her life. A rising member of a violent street gang is targeting Tina and her son.
Mike, Tina, and her son have to evade or neutralize their immediate pursuers, then disappear without leaving any traces that can be followed later.

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