Technology never works well the first time. Or even the second. Army veteran John Reiff is living proof. John is revived in the back of a dilapidated ambulance, on the run from a shadowy organization that is desperate to take him back. He is the first one, their archetype, and they need to know what happened after his escape. What is happening to his body and his mind. And they need to know now. Because Reiff knows things he shouldn’t. About them and about what they are hiding. A secret that has been in cold storage for several hundred years. And the insidious, methodical plan that has been in motion for half a century. John Reiff is their key --- a problem and the solution. A lab rat gone rogue at the worst possible time. But they will find him. They have to. And they will stop at nothing to get what they want.

The accident came quickly. With no warning. In the dead of night, a precipitous plunge into a freezing river trapped everyone inside the bus. It was then that Army veteran John Reiff’s life came to an end. Extinguished in the sudden rush of frigid water. There was no expectation of survival. None. Let alone waking up beneath blinding hospital lights. Struggling to move, or see, or even breathe. But the doctors assure him that everything is normal. That things will improve. And yet, he has a strange feeling that there's something they're not telling him. As Reiff's mind and body gradually recover, he becomes certain that the doctors are lying to him. One by one, puzzle pieces are slowly falling into place, and he soon realizes that things are not at all what they seem.