While working in a busy NHS hospital, nurse Tracy Pickford gets a better job in a private fertility clinic. The Jenner Clinic is out in the country, very quiet and far away from the bustle of the city. All seems normal, but for the off-limits section where they keep test animals, and the nightshift Tracy is assigned to would be boring except for mysterious activities centring on those out of bounds laboratories.

On his arrival in the sleepy Yorkshire town nearest the Jenner Clinic, the fiendish Government official, Hennessey, orders all police out of the area, and calls up an army of khaki-clad 'specialists' who throw a security web around the site. Highly placed and powerful, Hennessey conducts a cover-up; mutilated victims disappear en route to the mortuary; the press are officially gagged by a 'D' notice; and the regular police's mass-murder inquiry is abruptly cancelled without any explanation to the detective in charge.

Peter Carson's subversive investigation uncovers Dr Jenner's dark past, including details of the probably illegal, certainly unethical genetic engineering experiment, he initiated a decade ago.