It is not quite dawn when fifty-two-year-old Janet Parker and her personal tour guide, Quiksing, arrive at the front gate of the public park. Having ignored a US State Department travel advisory warning regarding China, the brash businesswoman from Florida has insisted on visiting the Rock Forest prior to embarking on her late-morning flight out of Kunming.

She follows her guide past a pagoda and onto a wooden platform that winds through the jagged formations of limestone. “Hold it, Quik-sing. Are you telling me this is it? This is what we drove an hour to see?”

“Wo ting budong—”

“English, Quik-sing, English.”

“I do not understand, Miss Janet. This is the Stone Forest. What were you expecting?”

“Obviously something a little more spectacular. All I can see are miles of rock.” A glimmer of brilliant amber light catches her eye. “Wait, what’s that?” She points to the source, the golden beacon flashing between several limestone shafts.

Quik-sing shields his eyes, startled by the light. “I-I do not know. Miss Janet, please, what are you doing?”

Janet climbs over the rail. “I want to see what that thing is.”

“Miss Janet—Miss Janet!”

“Relax, I’ll be back in a second.” Camera in hand, she climbs down to the ground, then squeezes between the base of two formations, cursing as she scrapes her ankle on the sharp rock. Maneuvering around the pinnacle, she looks up, seeing the source of the bright light.

“Now what in the hell is that?”

The black, insectlike object is easily forty feet long, its massive wings wedged between two towering spires of limestone. The inanimate beast is perched on a pair of red-hot talons, which appear to have punctured the karst, causing it to sizzle.

“Quik-sing, get over here.” Janet snaps another photo as the first rays of sunlight strike the creature’s wings. The amber beacon darkens as it flashes faster and faster. “Hey, Quik-sing, what the hell am I paying you for?”

The silent explosion of brilliant white light instantly blinds the businesswoman, the ignition of the pure-fusion device generating a cauldron of energy hotter than the surface of the Sun. Janet Parker registers a brief, bizarre burning sensation as her skin, fat, and blood broil away from the bone, her skeleton vaporizing a nanosecond later, as the searing-hot fireball races outward in all directions at the speed of light.

The combustion spreads quickly throughout the Stone Forest, the heat vaporizing the karst, releasing a dense, toxic cloud of carbon dioxide. Compressed beneath a ceiling of arctic air, the poisonous vapors hug the ground, rippling outward like a gaseous tsunami.

Most of the population of Kunming is still asleep when the noxious, invisible gas cloud rolls through the city like a hot gust on a summer’s day. The early risers drop to their knees, clutching their throats as the world spins around them. Those still in bed barely register a twitch as they suffocate in their sleep.