When government scientist Mick Keogh glimpses his dead wife on a Metro platform he has no inkling of the journey that lies ahead. The ultimate fate of human intelligence and the universe itself hangs in precarious balance, and a seemingly inconsequential string of mistakes can send it into irretrievable oblivion.

Recruited to help solve the mystery of an enormous hidden structure—the Compass Rose— on the plains of Montana, Keogh must operate under constraints he does not comprehend, manage an ad hoc team of experts operating in near-isolation, solve the mystery of unexplained madness that overtakes those who venture too close, and make a perilous journey through time and space and his own tormented past, facing a deadly challenge at the origin of all things and discovering finally the secret of the universal symbol of power and divinity—the Mandala.