The victim of a government experiment to create superintelligent humans learns the cause of the strange dreams he has been having—and that he will self-destruct by his 21st birthday unless he finds the scientist who "created" him by implanting a chip in his brain. He becomes a fugitive when he and Maria, a girl who crashed his 20th birthday party, are accused of killing another "cyb" actually shot by a government agent named Winston, bent on tracking down all the cybs and killing them.

Ed's only hope for survival is a doctor who worked on the project, Victor Heisenberg.