Three MIT students are on a road trip to take Haley to California, but when they stay at a hotel, Nick and Jonah discover that the hacker NOMAD (who nearly got Jonah and Nick expelled for breaking into MIT servers) has found their location and is taunting them with strange and ominous emails. . After driving to an abandoned house in the middle of Nevada, Nick and Jonah black out after watching Haley being pulled into the air by an unseen force. When Nick regains consciousness in an underground facility – he finds himself in a waking nightmare.