It's a quiet evening in Utah when suddenly, an American satellite lands near Piedmont
and two teenagers that happen to be nearby decide to take it to town in their truck.
By the time the military arrives, the satellite's already gone, and when they drive to town,
they find bodies everywhere.
A man named Kyle tries to ask the soldiers for help, but soon they're all falling dead
as well because of an infectious disease outbreak of unknown origins.
The head of the army's biological defense group, General Mancheck calls Beeter, the
director of the National Security Council to inform him of the situation and let him
know they're already quarantining the area.
Beeter promises he'll take care of communicating with President Scott and Mancheck is authorized
to activate the Wildfire protocol, which summons five very important scientists in cases of
a potential high-level bioterror threat.
In the Peterson Air Force Base, Mancheck meets with the team.
There's Jeremy, head of this project; Tsi, a microbiologist that used to help the Chinese
government with biological weapons; Charlene, a pathologist; Bill, a virologist and army
major that stopped a biological attack in the past; and Angela, a biologist specialized
in exotic diseases.
Mancheck shows them the footage taken by a drone and informs them they seem to be in
the presence of a biological agent they've code-named "Andromeda".
They don't know why the satellite fell, and Tsi finds it suspicious that they're keeping
it so secret.
While watching the footage, Angela notices one of the bodies move, which means there
are survivors.
Meanwhile, investigate reporter Jack meets with his friend Wheezer that has acquired
some secret information about something called "Project Scoop" in the hands of Mancheck and
a video of the soldiers dying in Piedmont that he got thanks to his hacking skills.
After buying the video, Jack calls Jeremy's old house and the doctor's ex-wife tells him
Jeremy was picked up by the army without explanation.
Jeremy, Angela, and Bill are sent to Utah to retrieve any possible survivors while Mancheck
receives a worrying call from his right hand Ferrus, telling him Jack has somehow acquired
some information.
Mancheck orders him not to touch Jack yet, only to keep an eye on him and concentrate
on finding his source.
Speaking of Jack, he goes to see his producer Charlie, who isn't happy to see him because
Jack is supposed to be in rehab.
However, he changes his mind when he hears the information Jack has and gives him three
days to try to get the news properly.
In the meantime, Wheezer is stopped by the police in the middle of the road.
Suspicious, he calls Jack's number so his inbox can record what happens.
This turns out to be the smart thing to do, because when the cop comes closer, he kills
Wheezer on the spot and steals his phone.
In Piedmont, the team discovers there has been a fire, and that the birds so far haven't
been affected, but their helicopter drops chlorazine to kill the birds and avoid any
risks.
Once the team lands, they begin checking out the bodies, discovering that while most of
them show the same symptoms, some of them died in different circumstances, but they
do all have one thing in common: nobody is bleeding.
Using the tracking system from the army truck the dead soldiers left there, the team finds
and retrieves the satellite, which had been opened by the locals.
When Angela checks the veins of the dead body near the satellite, she discovers there isn't
any blood in them, only dust.
Afterward, the team enters a store to check the security cameras and discovers some of
the people affected by this disease went crazy, going as far as ending things themselves.
Suddenly, Angela hears some crying and follows it to find a colicky baby that they take away
with them.
Kyle also finds them and attacks them, so Jeremy knocks him out to bring him into the
helicopter as well.
The team then leaves without seeing there's a dog around too.
After getting these updates, Mancheck calls Beeter to inform him and the president there's
a high chance they'll need to nuke the area.
Stock and his men get furious with Beeter because they never were told about Project
Scoop, and the president decides that before jumping to nukes so quickly, he'll let the
scientists see if there's a less dangerous way to take care of this.
Meanwhile, Jack hears the sound of a gunshot coming from Wheezer's message in his inbox.
He calls Charlie to tell him he's found out soldiers have been ordered around by Beeter,
who shouldn't have that power, and asks him if he can find out where Wheezer is.
The team, the satellite, and the survivors are taken to an isolated underground laboratory
powered by a small water-cooled nuclear reactor.
Jeremy, Angela, and Bill are put through thorough contamination, and afterward, Jeremy explains
that in case of a contamination breach, a fifteen-minute self-destruct sequence would
automatically start and only Bill's key and thumbprint can stop it.
To avoid having the team spill the beans to reporters, Mancheck sends his communicator
officer to lie to the team, saying communication is down for now.
Afterward, the team begins running some tests.
The satellite is two or three generations old, and it wasn't made for communication
or navigation, it seems to be a biocontainment vessel, which confirms Mancheck has been lying.
It also has some black substance on it that could possibly be Andromeda.
While Charlene and Bill experiment with animals, Angela checks on the survivors and Jeremy
begins to think Mancheck has isolated them on purpose.
Outside Piedmont, a whole military operation is being set up, and Jack tries to interview
them for tv, but not even the soldiers know what they're doing there.
Then, Jack gets a call from Charlie, who confirms Wheezer is dead.
After he returns to the city to identify the body, Jack deals with the grief by buying
some illegal substances, and he discovers he's being followed.
Back in the lab, Jeremy asks the security guard outside if he has a phone he can borrow
and uses it to leave a message for Jack, telling him he has important intel.
By analyzing the black substance, Tsi finds Andromeda and discovers it was made with nanotechnology
light-years ahead of current Earth technology.
Angela checks on Kyle again, who finally wakes up in panic.
After being told he's been quarantined and he can't leave, Kyle tells Angela his medical
history, including the fact they used to have an ulcer.
Angela asks him what happened that night, but Kyle doesn't know much.
The teens took the satellite to the fire station because the chief used to be an engineer,
and Kyle had been there playing cards with him.
He only left a few minutes to buy a drink, and when he came back, everyone was either
dropping dead or ending things themselves.
Afterward, the team gets together to discuss what they've found out so far.
Andromeda is the size of a single cell and transmitted by air, but they think corpses
can't transmit it.
It's also been engineered, thus it can't be simply a natural organism that got lost in
space.
The most shocking discovery, though, is the fact Andromeda doesn't have DNA, which proves
it's alien.
In Utah, the dog leaves town and is eaten by predators, who are starting to pass the
disease among the animal population.
Jack manages to get inside the military camp by sneaking inside a food truck, and the snacks
earn him the soldiers' favor.
While he's asking some questions, he gets a call from Jeremy, who is using the guard's
phone again.
Jack tells Jeremy about the soldiers' mysterious orders and in return, Jeremy tells Jack about
Andromeda.
Meanwhile, in a diner forty miles south of Piedmont, a sheriff arrives with a headache
only to suddenly kill everyone in the room.
Mancheck is informed of this incident and comes to the conclusion the sheriff had passed
through Piedmont, leaving before they secured the area.
He also gets a call from the lab guard with a message from Jeremy requesting communication
to be up again if they don't want Jack to talk about Project Scoop on tv.
Not having any other choice, Mancheck calls the scientists, still denying that communications
were actually working but accepting to tell them the truth about the satellite.
NASA astronomers discovered the sudden appearance of a wormhole in our solar system, which could
potentially be the way to explore other parts of the galaxy.
The satellite had been built to explore these possibilities and perhaps even bring back
samples of living organisms.
They don't know what exactly happened to the satellite when it approached the wormhole,
but it suddenly became erratic and fell right before the wormhole closed.
Seeing as this further confirms the alien origin of Andromeda and the fact they've had
a breach from the quarantined area, they need to act fast; meaning the president authorizes
them to nuke the area before it spreads more.
The soldiers begin moving further away not to be affected by the radiation, but they
end up dead when a bird drops a dead rat carrying Andromeda near them.
Only one of them survives and takes a truck to return to camp, where Jack is snooping
around and finds out there's special equipment to collect biosamples.
When the truck arrives, crashing against everything in its path, Jack records it with his phone.
He tries to send the video to Charlie, but he's suddenly arrested by a group of soldiers
that take the phone from him.
A pilot is sent with the nuke, but at that moment, the scientist discovers Andromeda
can feed on radiation.
They immediately call the White House to cancel the bombing and the orders reach the pilot
just in time, but when she's about to fly back, her plane begins malfunctioning and
the nuke falls anyway.
The people in the army camp are fine, but seismic stations are picking this up all over
the world, so Scott orders his PR team to tell them one of their planes malfunctioned
and fell during a test.
Jeremy argues with Mancheck, thinking they're being lied to again, but Charlene checks the
pilot's last transmission and confirms Andromeda caused the malfunction because it's mutated
and it now can consume nylon.
It probably reached the jet either through the smoke from the fire when it flew over
the area.
Finding the dead soldiers outside the perimeter also confirms Andromeda has mutated to be
able to travel from dead bodies and animals.
Meanwhile, Beeter gets a call from Charlie, who reveals he did get the video from Jack.
Beeter still denies knowing anything and promises to look into it before calling Ferrus to ask
him to take care of any loose ends.
Ferrus arrives at the camp and shows Jack that they have pictures of him buying illegal
substances, but this isn't enough to bribe Jack into telling him what he knows.
While chlorazine and flamethrowers are used in the area to kill all the contaminated animals
because Andromeda is moving even more quickly with each mutation, Jack is put in a helicopter
to be taken away from the camp.
However, Jack gets suspicious when Ferris gives his guard a bag claiming it's Jack's
when it actually isn't.
Once they're flying far enough from the camp, Jack distracts the guard by opening a fire
extinguisher.
The smoke causes the pilot to land and Jack jumps off the plane, which suddenly explodes.
His instincts had been right, the bag had been a bomb to stop him from returning to
the city.
By the time Ferrus and his soldiers arrive to check the wreckage, Jack is gone, and Ferrus
sends a bunch of men to find him.
Back in the lab, Angela manages to get information from the crazy sheriff's doctor and learns
he had two incidences of ketoacidosis.
After watching the mutated structure for a while, Jeremy and Tsi theorize that Andromeda
can communicate among its separate parts.This is confirmed when they discover that a separate
Andromeda sample that hadn't been experimented on has also adapted to the threat.
Jeremy checks with Mancheck and his scans, which show Andromeda is moving in direction
of the river because it's intelligent and wants to contaminate the water to reach more
areas, this direction would also take it to Las Vegas.
Mancheck orders to evacuate the city and shut down all airports to attempt to contain it.
Later, Angela is having a nap when she suddenly dreams about being back in Piedmont, seeing
Kyle play cards with his friends and remembering what he said about his medical history.
This finally gives her the answer she's been looking for: the baby, the sheriff, and Kyle
all suffered from acidosis, meaning Andromeda can only live in a very narrow range of acidity.
Developing an acid to kill it is possible, but that solution would kill humans as well,
and Andromeda could send a message to mutate accordingly anyway.
Meanwhile, Scott is dealing with one more problem: a group of environmental protesters
has used violence to take over a controversial thermal vent mine that the president had been
championing.
The team discovers Andromeda has binary code in its structure, which brings the theory
of it being a message from the future, warning them or expecting them to do something about
it.
The only thing Earth has in the present that can't be in the future must be some natural
resource that we used up or destroyed.
They change from binary to ASCII to decipher the code and finally get to see the message:
there's a number, a symbol with interlocking triangles, and the words "bacillus infernus",
which translates to "bacteria from hell".
Bill recognizes it from past work, it's a bacteria that can only be found deep in the
ocean and can survive extreme environments like very acidic ph.
It also is harmless to humans and feeds on sulfur from the vents, which is what Andromeda
is made of.
The president's vent mining must've destroyed all the bacteria, explaining why they don't
have it in the future to keep Andromeda at bay.
No matter how much it mutates, Andromeda can't change its basic sulfur composition, so bacillus
infernus is the perfect solution to destroy it.
The scientists call the president to ask for a sample from the vents, and Scott is desperate
enough to authorize it.
In the meantime in Utah, a young couple is fooling around when the boyfriend takes a
break to relieve himself.
While doing number two, a rat bites his rear, and he immediately begins feeling sick.
Seeing as his boyfriend is getting violent, Leila decides to get in their car and drive
away.
Ferrus calls Charlie to tell him Jack is dead, but actually, Jack is wandering around until
eventually, he comes across Leila and asks for her phone, but she doesn't have signal.
Nearby, the soldiers guarding the borders are attacked by infected birds, causing a
dead body to fall in the water and begin spreading Andromeda through the river as well.
Beeter isn't happy with Scott's decisions and sends Ferrus to kidnap Charlene's family.
In the lab, the scientists confirm bacillus infernus can kill Andromeda and begin growing
it in biological breeder vessels that will accelerate the process.
While she's working, Charlene gets a call from her husband and Ferrus, who gives her
a warning: if she wants to see her family again, she must hide away a sample of Andromeda.
Afterward, the team has another meeting because Jeremy wants to inform them that Andromeda
is smarter than it looks: there's a high chance it attacked the plane on purpose to get the
nuke and feed.
This means that now they have the weapon they needed, they have to destroy every Andromeda
sample in the lab before it learns what they're doing.
Charlene volunteers to do the destroying so she can keep a sample.
Meanwhile, Andromeda mutates again thanks to its contact with water, and now it's advancing
incredibly fast on land too.
Leila and Jack can see it change the color of the plants and when it comes closer, they
begin driving away.
Some of the soldiers that are after Jack get killed, but enough of them escape, starting
a car chase as they open fire.
Leila's car begins losing oil when they hit a rock, but this gives Jack an idea.
When they reach a tunnel under a bridge, they park the car sideways to block it, then Jack
uses his t-shirt to light it on fire before escaping with Leila on foot.
After a few hours, the bacillus infernus is finally ready, and Mancheck and his pilots
stop by the lab to pick up the containers.
While the army begins covering Piedmont and the surrounding area, an alarm suddenly goes
off in the lab: the computer detected contamination when Charlene tried to retrieve the sample
she hid and the lab will soon self-destruct.
This alarm has lots of flashing lights that trigger Tsi's photosensitive epilepsy, and
his seizure causes him to accidentally destroy the self-destruct control panel on their lab
level of the building.
To stop the alarm, they'll have to go to another level, but all doors and elevators have been
sealed off.
The only way up turns out to be through the exhaust vent above the radioactive water.
Once Tsi is feeling better, Angela takes over the computer and gives Jeremy and Bill directions
to know where to climb.
Unfortunately, the escaped Andromeda is deteriorating the pipes, and Bill notices he's about to
fall, so he passes the key to Jeremy before plunging to his death.
The problem is that they also need the thumb, thus Tsi decides to sacrifice himself by jumping
into the radioactive water to get the thumb, which he tosses at Jeremy before dying as
well.
With Angela's guidance, Jeremy reaches the next level, though he gets wounded when he
falls through the vent.
With great effort, he drags his body through the floor and reaches the panel, effectively
shutting down the self-destruction sequence.
In Utah, Leila and Jack get far enough to finally get signal on the phone, so Jack calls
Charlie to let him know about Ferrus and the sample carriers.
Mancheck and his men fly above them but don't get to see them because they're too busy celebrating:
the plan worked and Andromeda is being eaten away by bacillus infernus.
A few days later, a special funeral is organized to honor Tsi and Bill.
After the speech is over, Jack interviews the remaining members of the team.
Jeremy is frustrated because Scott still refuses to shut down the vent mining project, so he
takes the chance to speak against it on camera.
Meanwhile, Mancheck meets with Ferrus to try to confront him about the stolen sample, but
they both end up assassinated.
In the end, a sample of Andromeda was still saved and sent by Beeter to a space station
orbiting Earth, where an astronaut puts it inside a container with the number and the
interlocking triangles the scientists had seen on the code.
This creates an ontological paradox that indicates this is the same container that will later
travel through the wormhole.