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From the Number One international bestselling author of Jurassic Park comes this classic Crichton page-turner, weaving together heart-pounding thrills with cutting-edge technology.

In the Nevada desert, an experiment has gone horribly wrong. A cloud of nanoparticles-micro-robots-has escaped from the laboratory. This cloud is self-sustaining and self-reproducing. It is intelligent and learns from experience. For all practical purposes, it is alive. It has been programmed as a predator. It is evolving swiftly, becoming more deadly with each passing hour. Every attempt to destroy it has failed. And we are the prey.

As fresh as today’s headlines, Michael Crichton’s most compelling novel yet tells the story of a mechanical plague, and the desperate efforts of a handful of scientists to stop it. Drawing on up-to-the-minute science fact, PREY takes us into the emerging realms of nanotechnology and artificial distributed intelligence-in a story of breathtaking suspense.

“TERRIFYING…IRRESISTIBLY SUSPENSEFUL.” -- New York Times Book Review

“INTRICATE PLOTTING AND FLAWLESS PACING…you won’t be able to put it down.” -- Time magazine

“CRACKLING…MYSTERIOUS….” -- Entertainment Weekly

“Just what his fans expect: A WILD, SCARY RIDE…” -- Detroit Free Press

“Another PAGE-TURNING TRIUMPH” -- Charlotte Observer

“INCREDIBLY SCARY and relentless” -- Minneapolis Star Tribune

“PREY WILL KEEP YOU TURNING PAGES” -- Chattanooga Times

“RELENTLESSLY ENTERTAINING” -- Raleigh News & Observer

“… a harrowing tale of nanoparticles gone beserk.” -- USA Today

“A TERRIFYING TALE…combining technological verisimilitude with heart-pounding suspense…” -- The Oregonian (Portland)

“Serious and scary…” -- Washington Post Book World

“This is how to write a thriller …Crichton’s latest page-turning triumph.” -- Detroit Free Press

“Crichton has proved he knows how to ratchet up the fear factor.” -- Denver Post

“…so god-awful scary and relentless, it’ll knock your head clear of whatever ails you.” -- St. Petersburg Times

“Once again, Crichton has proved to be uncannily timely.” -- St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“Crichton is a master storyteller.” -- Detroit News

“A cross between Jurassic Park and The Andromeda Strain….” -- Columbus Dispatch

“PREY delivers that expected Crichton charge.” -- Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Chapter One
Day 1
10:04 a.m.

Things never turn out the way you think they will.

I never intended to become a househusband. Stay-at-home husband. Full-time dad, whatever you want to call it -- there is no good term for it. But that's what I had become in the last six months. Now I was in Crate & Barrel in downtown San Jose, picking up some extra glasses, and while I was there I noticed they had a good selection of placemats. We needed more placemats; the woven oval ones that Julia had bought a year ago were getting pretty worn, and the weave was crusted with baby food. The trouble was, they were woven, so you couldn't wash them. So I stopped at the display to see if they had any placemats that might be good, and I found some pale blue ones that were nice, and I got some white napkins. And then some yellow placemats caught my eye, because they looked really bright and appealing, so I got those, too. They didn't have six on the shelf, and I thought we'd better have six, so I asked the salesgirl to look in the back and see if they had more. While she was gone I put the placemat on the table, and put a white dish on it, and then I put a yellow napkin next to it. The setting looked very cheerful, and I began to think maybe I should get eight instead of six. That was when my cell phone rang.

It was Julia. "Hi, hon."

"Hi, Julia. How's it going?" I said. I could hear machinery in the background, a steady chugging. Probably the vacuum pump for the electron microscope. They had several scanning electron microscopes at her laboratory.

She said, "What're you doing?"

"Buying placemats, actually."

"Where?"

"Crate andBarrel."

She laughed. "You the only guy there?"

"No ... "

"Oh, well, that's good," she said. I could tell Julia was completely uninterested in this conversation. Something else was on her mind. "Listen, I wanted to tell you, Jack, I'm really sorry, but it's going to be a late night again."

"Uh-huh ... " The salesgirl came back, carrying more yellow mats. Still holding the phone to my ear, I beckoned her over. I held up three fingers, and she put down three more mats. To Julia, I said, "Is everything all right?"

"Yeah, it's just crazy like normal. We're broadcasting a demo by satellite today to the VCs in Asia and Europe, and we're having trouble with the satellite hookup at this end because the video truck they sent -- oh, you don't want to know ... anyway, we're going to be delayed two hours, hon. Maybe more. I won't get back until eight at the earliest. Can you feed the kids and put them to bed?"

"No problem," I said. And it wasn't. I was used to it. Lately, Julia had been working very long hours. Most nights she didn't get home until the children were asleep. Xymos Technology, the company she worked for, was trying to raise another round of venture capital -- twenty million dollars -- and there was a lot of pressure. Especially since Xymos was developing technology in what the company called "molecular manufacturing," but which most people called nanotechnology. Nano wasn't popular with the VCs -- the venture capitalists -- these days. Too many VCs had been burned in the last ten years with products that were supposedly just around the corner, but then never made it out of the lab. The VCs considered nano to be all promise, no products.

Not that Julia needed to be told that; she'd worked for two VC firms herself. Originally trained as a child psychologist, she ended up as someone who specialized in "technology incubation," helping fledgling technology companies get started. (She used to joke she was still doing child psychology.) Eventually, she'd stopped advising firms and joined one of them full-time. She was now a vice president at Xymos.

Julia said Xymos had made several breakthroughs, and was far ahead of others in the field. She said they were just days away from a prototype commercial product. But I took what she said with a grain of salt.

In the Nevada desert, an experiment has gone horribly wrong. A cloud of nanoparticles?micro-robots?has escaped from the laboratory. This cloud is self-sustaining and self-reproducing. It is intelligent and learns from experience. For all practical purposes, it is alive.

It has been programmed as a predator. It is evolving swiftly, becoming more deadly with each passing hour.

Every attempt to destroy it has failed.

And we are the prey.