At the request of Scott Brennan, Carmen McCallum travels to New Zealand. James Ngata, an old friend of Brennan's, was murdered shortly after he reestablished contact after many years. Ngata, who was found guilty of genetic doping after his rugby career, had since been working as a security guard for a pharmaceutical company that is part of the Transgenic group. He was responsible for protecting Raj Kapoor, the star agrogeneticist of Transgenic. The search for the motive behind the murder leads Brennan and McCallum to the highly secured island of the pharmaceutical company to get in touch with Kapoor. However, they are not the only ones after the geneticist; a long-thought-dead very good friend of Carmen's is also involved.