Sleep is the new enemy. The nightmare is the cure.
It begins with a dream-a vivid nightmare of a long, elegant suspension bridge crumbling into an abyss of black, pulsing water. Across the globe, people are waking up in a cold sweat, their hearts hammering with a terror they can't explain. But the terror is just beginning. To dream it once is to be infected. To dream it twice is a death sentence.
As cities descend into the chaos of forced insomnia and the world's governments begin to crumble, Dr. Lena Varga, a brilliant but disgraced WHO epidemiologist, watches her direst warnings come true. The phenomenon she tried to expose is not a biological virus, but something far more terrifying: a pathogenic idea. A dream that spreads through whispers, social media, and bedtime stories.
When her own niece becomes infected, Lena's mission becomes a desperate, personal race against time. Thrown into a world tearing itself apart, she discovers that the official story is a lie and that the dream's origin is a conspiracy more horrifying than any disease. Her quest for a cure will take her from the sterile bunkers of a new global military command to the silent monasteries of Japan and the lost tribes of the Atacama Desert, where ancient disciplines may hold the only key to survival.
But the dream is learning. It is evolving. Two new, post-human species are rising from the ashes of the old world: one a soulless, logical machine, the other an ecstatic, all-consuming hive mind. Caught between them, Lena realizes she is no longer fighting a pandemic. She is fighting a war for the very definition of consciousness itself.
Perfect for fans of Contagion, Inception, and Project Hail Mary, The Fifth Pandemic is a relentless, high-concept thriller that explores the terrifying fragility of the human mind and asks a chilling question: In a war against a sentient idea, what does it mean to be human?
