Prologue

Seventeen-year-old Alexander Pierce, a Russian-born orphan adopted in his teens by wealthy American parents, settles into a relatively normal routine upon arriving in St. Paul, Minnesota-until the course of his life changes forever in a near-death car accident. Amanda Baird, a brilliant and hard-working teenager who cares for her ailing mother while attending high school in Las Vegas and working full-time as a nurse's aid, experiences a similar life-changing event after receiving a near-fatal gun shot wound in an attempted robbery. The teens are given a mission in the perilous minutes during which they both experience sudden cardiac arrest-but both struggle to comprehend the source and meaning of the mission. Was it from a "higher power?" Did they merely imagine it when they were fending off death?

Months later, seven terminally ill children in a St. Paul hospital are mysteriously cured over the course of a weekend. A few days after that, seven more children suffering the same fate as the children in St. Paul are cured, overnight, in a Las Vegas hospital. Even after comprehensive work-ups, the world's foremost cancer specialists are at a loss as to how the children could have experienced such spontaneous and simultaneous remissions. Determined to find the answer, Drs. Rachel Zimmerman of St. Paul Children's and Mia Dala of Sunrise Children's (Las Vegas) review hospital videos of the hallways outside of the children's rooms directly before the time of their remissions-and make the shocking discovery of Alexander and Amanda's apparent involvement.