Intrigue

On a road trip, Nic and two friends are drawn to an isolated area by a computer genius. When everything suddenly goes dark, Nic regains consciousness - only to find himself in a waking nightmare.

Three MIT students Jonah (Beau Knapp), Nic (Brenton Thwaites), and Haley (Olivia Cooke) are on a road trip to take Haley to California, a decision that's stressing Nic and Haley's relationship. Nic walks with forearm crutches.

Haley feels Nic is distancing himself from her and Nic explains he doesn't want his Muscular Dystrophy to hold her back. Haley is in tears listening to Nic and breaks up with him as she feels that is being unfairly judged when she has not even done anything to indicate that she has an issue with Nic's recent condition.

During their stay in a hotel, Nic and Jonah discover that the hacker NOMAD (who nearly got Jonah and Nic expelled for breaking into MIT servers), has found their location and is taunting them with strange and ominous emails. NOMAD also hacks one of their laptops and activates their camera feed remotely. Nic and Jonah are livid and immediately start tracking NOMAD. They identify the IP from which NOMAD hacked their laptop and translate that into a physical address.

On the way, they receive emails with real-time photos of Haley's car from a traffic camera. They track NOMAD to an abandoned house in the middle of Nevada near their path and decide to go after him. They reach the house in the middle of the night and decide to investigate.

After finding nothing in the house, Nic and Jonah black out as Haley is pulled into the air by an unseen force. Nic, now with the number 2.3.5.41 tattooed on his arm, wakes up in a strange and sterile underground research facility, where he is questioned by Dr. Wallace Damon (Laurence Fishburne), the head of the "transition group" in helping with his strange situation. Nic is not able to move his limbs, even though he is conscious. He can move around in a wheelchair. He tells Nic what they encountered near the house was an EBE: an extra-terrestrial biological entity. Nic remains in disbelief. Damon shows a footage from Nic's own video camera and pauses when an alien face can be seen. All the workers in the facility can be seen wearing Hazmat suits, including Damon. Damon says that this protection is necessary due to the threat of alien contamination.

Nic is taken to his room where he hears Jonah talking to him through a small vent in the wall, saying his "body feels weird." Nic also notices that his legs, previously weak but functional, are now completely numb. When Dr. Damon questions Nic again, Nic tries to get answers about Haley's condition (whom he saw in a coma in one of the rooms at the facility), but to no avail. Following an unexplained experiment on a cow in another part of the facility, a security alarm goes off and Nic, along with other personnel, finds large dents with scorch marks running across the walls and no sign of Jonah.

Nic asks Damon where Jonah went, but Damon says Jonah was "never recovered" from the house. Nic tries to break Haley out but is intercepted. After Nic is restrained, he's shocked to discover that his legs have been amputated and replaced by prosthetic legs made from alien technology. Nic then uses these super-powered limbs to break himself and Haley out of the facility, only to discover they're in the middle of a vast barren desert area.

After hijacking an 18-wheeler tractor trailer, Nic and Haley try to find a way around a seemingly endless canyon that extends around the facility and surrounding area. At a visitor's center, they soon come across Jonah disguised as one of the facility's men dressed in a white HAZMAT suit. Jonah reveals that he too had limbs taken from him, as his forearms and hands have been replaced with the same alien technology. Jonah speculates that they're all in Area 51 and that this is all a test.

After Nic discovers indications of alien technology also implanted in Haley's spine, the trio drive up to a military checkpoint where Jonah tries to hack into their computer system, only to be stopped by gunfire from the facility personnel, which damage his eyeglasses and ruins his ability to see the computer clearly.

Nic and Jonah hug as Jonah prepares for his final stand to enable Nic and Haley's escape. He uses his remaining strength and prosthetic alien arms to subdue the group of soldiers. However, Nic and Haley's escape is short-lived; as they approach the only bridge that would take them over the canyon to the outside world, they soon run into Damon and his military men who blow out the truck's tires.

Haley is evacuated by helicopter beyond the canyon and, knowing that Nic has mastered use of his legs, Damon tells Nic "you can't reach her." After hearing a loud horn coming from the sky, Nic realizes Damon is NOMAD (Damon spelled backwards). Damon then explains that it was Nic who came looking for him, that this was his fault, and adding that Nic is "the perfect integration of human will and alien technology. Our finest achievement." Agitated and emotionally compromised, Nic's bionic legs enable him to sprint at supersonic speed across the bridge in the direction of Haley's chopper where he hits an invisible barrier and breaks through.

Nic finds himself inside a larger exterior facility. Housed within it can be seen "Area 51", the Earth-like world within the canyon city. Damon walks up to Nic and he removes his helmet to reveal that he is actually a robotic alien with a human-like face. Nic turns around, and through the glass sees stars and outer space. He realizes he is not in a government facility, but is actually on an immense alien spacecraft numbered 2.3.5.41 (matching the numerical tattoo on his arm) that is docking at their home world.

A zoom-out view reveals the entire ship, with a parabolic sun shield on top and a large alien city, complete with skyscrapers, pointing away from the alien sun. Another, similar city-ship can be seen in the distance.