A skilled electrical engineer, Michael Jennings, is adept at reverse engineering; he disassembles other companies' technology to help his clients understand and surpass the competition. However, after each job, Michael's memory is wiped to maintain corporate secrecy, leaving him with no recollection of his work. He takes on a potentially lucrative assignment from his old friend and partner, James Rethrick. The job, with a paycheck that promises to set Michael up for life, is more intense than any he's undertaken before. It requires him to isolate himself for three years to build a machine based on the work of a brilliant physicist. Accepting the terms, Michael understands that after completing the project, all memories of his time spent working on it will be erased.

Upon completion, Michael goes through the memory wipe, but when he expects to receive his hefty payday, he is shocked to find that instead of the agreed-upon sum, he has only an envelope filled with random personal items. Even more disconcerting, Michael learns that, prior to the memory wipe, he forfeited his entire payment. With the FBI on his heels and a bewildered suspicion that his latest project may have consequences far beyond anything he could imagine, he must piece together the puzzle of his past actions using the seemingly innocuous items before it's too late. During this frantic quest, he reconnects with Rachel, a biologist he worked with on the project, who may hold the key to understanding the significance of the items and what he's actually created.