When a traveller dies on a flight back to London from Africa, bleeding profusely, the Ebola virus is blamed. Steven Dunbar of the Sci-Med Directorate investigates and discovers that this outbreak cannot be blamed on Ebola, and that others, completely unrelated to the first victim, are falling ill and dying. Somewhere there is a link. Somehow the wild cards are related. As more and more people fall ill and die throughout the British Isles in the run-up to Christmas, politicians equivocate and scientists attempt to find a seemingly impossible answer. Steven questions his own belief in medicine and in his role as a doctor. Gradually, the truth becomes clearer . . . it is terrifying and unbelievable.