When a number of infectees and seemingly innocent people are killed, it becomes apparent that someone is going after people affected by the alien signal and is locating them using their heightened brain waves.

An alien craft's appearance near a cargo freighter in the Atlantic Ocean seems linked to the deaths of most of the crew. Dr. Molly Caffrey, a government contingency analyst, is called in to investigate, and she assembles a team that includes a NASA microbiologist, a physicist, a covert operative, and an expert in languages and mathematics to probe the mystery.