Christian Michaels is a talented yet jaded Baltimore city detective. His indifference towards his job, disdain for his colleagues, and general unreliability over the prior year have alienated him from fellow officers at the precinct and garnered the wrath of his abrasive and hard-headed captain. Unaware of the circumstances surrounding Christian's odd behavior, the captain has generally dismissed Christian as a liability, assigning him to low-level cases and preventing the detective from contributing to meaningful investigations.

One morning, the captain orders Christian and Sergeant James Davis, the detective's last remaining ally, to investigate what appears to be a benign and dead-end burglary on a research laboratory floor at The Johns Hopkins Hospital. However, Christian quickly discovers that the break-in is anything but an open-and-shut case. He finds himself involved in a murder, kidnapping, and potential global conspiracy of the highest order - one that threatens the lives of everyone around him.

Going against his captain's orders to drop the investigation, and with only James and a Johns Hopkins research scientist as his support, Christian sets out to discover the truth. He finds that unveiling precisely what happened requires him to put aside his apathetic nature and cold personality and revisit a previously unsolved case from a year earlier.