This is the second volume in the series.

A year after The Leviathan, John Klade has gone off the grid. When a terrorist bombing in Athens leaves behind a phoenix symbol intertwined with the trident, Klade realizes the Brotherhood isn’t gone — it’s evolved.

Yale Symbologist, Annabelle Johansson, now on a sabbatical and lecturing in Rome, is recruited by an EU counterterror unit to decode the symbol. She learns that a new sect — The Order of the Phoenix Tide — has risen, believing fire can “purify what the Deep cannot.”

Klade himself is recruited by MI6 black unit, based on his success if neutralizing the previous Trident-Serpent artifact.

The Order of the Phoenix Tide is using a new weapon, a resonance-based bioenergy project called The Phoenix Protocol, originally conceived by the Navy as a disaster-response technology and technically derived from Dr. Henrick Johansson's original research that focused on consciousness mapping for medical applications – helping coma patients, treating neurological disorders, preserving cognitive function during invasive brain surgeries. Klade and Annabelle discovered that the Order had militarized it, transforming a healing technology into a weapon.

Klade and Annabelle reunite as reluctant allies when they uncover that the Phoenix Tide’s leader, Dr. Isaac Kerrigan, was Cross’s scientific advisor — and the man who resurrected the relic’s energy signature.

Their quest led to a race against time to neutralize the Phoenix Protocol, leading them internationally in Rome, Cairo, and a hidden NATO base in Iceland, where other events occurred with the discovery of the phoenix symbol intertwined with the trident. Will they get to him in time to prevent Kerrigan from carrying out his full consciousness transfer, making perfect soldiers with a singular mind, the mind and tactics of Elias Cross?

Time was ticking.