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.

Molly and her team fear that cadets at a local military academy have been infected by the aliens after a janitor at the school viciously attacks several people before his head implodes. The investigation leads Molly to suspect that an infected cadet may be attempting to send an alien signal across the Internet that could affect millions of people.