On a crisp Autumn evening in western Nebraska, what started as a group of kids filming their drug-fuelled party ends in an explosive light show, leaving the victims apparently electrocuted, with odd scorch marks being the only evidence. While Maggie O'Dell tries to make sense of the different stories, sifting through what is real and what is hallucination, she realises that the surviving teens are being targeted and systematically eliminated.

Meanwhile on the East Coast, Army colonel Benjamin Platt is at the scene of a deadly outbreak, desperate to identify the pathogen that has infected children at a Virginia elementary school.

Despite the miles that separate them, the two cases collide as Maggie and Platt uncover secrets that were meant to stay hidden...