A corporate doctor just returned from a space station finds her husband in the bathroom dying and coughing up blood. CPB investigates it as a potential biohazard situation, but have to fight over jurisdiction with the doctor's employer.

The CPB's computer network goes haywire after a young man posing as a computer service technician sets off a security alarm. When interrogating him they discover that he's a product of a genetic engineering project that failed, and is now a member of a cult opposed to non-human sentience.

Brant is kidnapped on his way to a Mars safe house, and the assessor's office is prepared to pay the 40 million ransom in fear of loosing him to Rekall. Meanwhile Hume's personal problems continue as Olivia's memories don't seem to be returning.

When visiting a friend's apartment Olivia hears screaming, and finds her friend's rich husband standing over a bloody corpse. She is willing to testify, but given her recent memory problem she starts wondering if she just imagined the whole thing.

Olan decides to keep a vial found on corpse in a crashed shuttle out of her report because of concerns of what it might be. Unfortunately, its real owners, Vari Dyne Inc., is willing to go to great length to get it back.