The ascendant

Numbers don't lie. Not according to Garrett Reilly who, just two weeks past his twenty-sixth birthday, thinks he's probably the best bond analyst at his brokerage -- maybe even the best in all of Manhattan. Garrett's memory for numbers is photographic. But he doesn't just memorize them; he sorts them, ranks them, senses patterns in them. As he watches buy and sell numbers float across his Bloomberg terminal, Garrett notices what nobody else can: that US Treasury bonds are being sold off at an alarming rate -- two hundred billion dollars' worth. It's a discovery that he knows will make him incredibly rich. Then the United States military arrives at his office, and Garrett's life is blown to pieces. As Captain Alexis Truffant explains, Garrett has stumbled upon something much larger -- and scarier -- than he could have imagined: the first attack in a covert war of unthinkable proportions. His biggest problem? Numbers don't lie ... but governments can.