Carter Hayes and Ann Miller are suddenly attacked and beaten by two men. After the men have gone, Hayes calmly tells Ann, "The worst part's over now...." In San Francisco, couple Drake Goodman and Patty Palmer purchase a 19th-century Victorian house in the exclusive Pacific Heights neighborhood. They rent one of the building's two first-floor apartments to the Watanabes, a kindly Japanese couple. Soon after, Hayes visits to view the remaining vacant unit, driving an expensive 1987 Porsche 911 and carrying large amounts of cash, but is reluctant to undergo a credit check. He convinces Drake to waive the credit check in exchange for a list of references and an upfront payment of the first six months' rent, to be paid by wire transfer. Before any of this money is paid, however, Hayes arrives unannounced and shuts himself in the apartment. As the days pass, Hayes' promised wire transfer fails to materialize. From inside the apartment, sounds of loud hammering and drilling are heard at all hours of the day and night; however, the door is seldom answered. When Drake finally attempts to enter Hayes' apartment, he finds that the locks have been changed. Drake cuts the electricity and heat to the apartment, but Hayes summons the police, who side with Hayes and reprimand Drake. Drake and Patty hire a lawyer, Stephanie MacDonald; however, the eviction case is thwarted by Drake's actions. Hayes, safe from eviction for the time being, infests the house with cockroaches, which prompts the Watanabes to move out and pushes Drake and Patty further into debt. The stress takes its toll on the couple; Drake drinks heavily and Patty suffers a miscarriage. Hayes visits the couple, supposedly to offer his condolences, but an infuriated Drake attacks him and is arrested by the police, whom Hayes had already called to the scene in anticipation of an assault. The assault allows Hayes to file a civil lawsuit against Drake and, unbeknownst to the couple, assume control of Drake's possessions and identity. Hayes also files a restraining order, which forces Drake from the building. Once Drake is gone, Hayes begins stalking and harassing Patty. When Drake tries to enter the home to check on Patty, Hayes confronts Drake and shoots him, then plants a crowbar at the scene to prevent any criminal charges. While Drake is in the hospital, the eviction is finally handed down and authorities force entry into Hayes' apartment. By this time, however, Hayes has disappeared, and the apartment has been destroyed and stripped bare. Later, while cleaning out the destroyed apartment, Patty finds an old photograph of Hayes as a young boy. Written on the back is the name "James Danforth". She phones Bennett Fidlow, the Texas attorney whom Danforth had provided as a reference. Fidlow tells her that Danforth has a long history of wrongdoing and has been disowned by his family. Patty travels to Danforth's last-known address, a condominium in Desert Spring. There she finds Ann, his girlfriend and previous co-conspirator who had earlier come looking for him in San Francisco. Ann tells Patty that Carter Hayes is the name of the property's former landlord, and that Danforth assumed Hayes' identity and took possession of the condominium after (the genuine) Hayes hired two thugs to carry out the assault on Hayes and Miller. Ann also shows Patty a postcard from Danforth, written on the letterhead of a hotel in Century City, which had just arrived the day before. Patty tracks Danforth at the hotel, where he has checked in under Drake's name. Patty bluffs her way into his suite by posing as his wife, and while rummaging through his personal effects discovers he is using legal and financial documents in Drake's name. She calls Drake and tells him to cancel all of his credit cards and freeze the couple's joint bank account. She then places an exorbitant order for room service, which leads to Danforth being arrested. Danforth is bailed out of prison by a wealthy widow, Florence Peters, whom he was vetting to be his next victim. Once out on bail, Danforth returns to San Francisco to seek revenge on Patty and Drake, unwilling to accept responsibility for his actions and blaming them for his desires being ruined forever. Upstairs, he bludgeons Drake with a golf club, then attacks Patty in the downstairs apartment where she is busy making repairs. A struggle ensues, and a badly wounded Drake makes his way into the crawl space between the basement and the first-floor apartment. He reaches through a hole in the floor and grabs Danforth by the ankle while Patty pushes him away, causing Danforth to lose his balance and fall backward, landing on a water supply line and getting impaled in the process; a wounded Danforth desperately tries to escape, but is unable to and ultimately dies of his injury. Some time later, Patty and Drake have put their newly repaired building up for sale and show the property to another couple. The story ends with the couple having a private discussion about making an offer of $825,000-$850,000, which is $75,000-$100,000 more than what Drake and Patty had originally paid for it.

On Walter Sparrow's birthday (February 3), his wife Agatha gives him The Number 23, a book by Topsy Kretts, as a birthday present. Walter starts reading it and notices similarities between himself and the main character, the detective " Fingerling ". Fingerling is obsessed with the 23 enigma, the idea that all incidents and events are connected to the number 23. Walter too becomes obsessed with the number and attempts to uncover the mystery of the book's author, but he cannot find any information. Walter's son, Robin, is interested in the enigma too, but Agatha dismisses it as superstition. In the book, Fingerling discovers that his lover, Fabrizia, is having an affair and stabs her to death. The police arrest her lover because he found her body and picked up the murder weapon, assuming it was a type of sexual roleplay. Fingerling then prepares to commit suicide by jumping from a hotel balcony, and the book ends abruptly. Walter later learns of Laura Tollins, a murder victim whose body was never found, and whose murder is similar to Fabrizia's death. Walter believes that the man who was sent to prison for Laura's murder, Kyle Flinch, wrote the book. In prison, Walter visits Flinch, who denies killing Laura or writing the book. Robin discovers an address hidden in the book and they hope that it will lead them to the book's true author. When Walter confronts the man, Dr. Sirius Leary, he commits suicide by cutting his own throat. Before dying, Leary tells Agatha to go to a now-abandoned mental institution that he used to work at. At the institute, Agatha discovers a box with Walter's name on it. Walter discovers a code in the book that tells the reader the location of Laura's body. Walter and Robin find the skeleton, but when they return with the police, the skeleton is missing. After seeing Agatha washing mud off her hands, she admits that she moved the skeleton. Walter accuses her of being Topsy Kretts. However, Agatha says that Walter was really the one who wrote the book. Agatha shows Walter the box from the institute that has his name on it. Inside, Walter sees the sources he used to write the book, and begins having flashes of repressed memories. In room 23 of the hotel in the book, Walter finds the missing final chapter of the book scribbled under the wallpaper. Walter used to be obsessed with the 23 enigma because it drove his father to suicide. He was also involved with Laura, who left him for Flinch, resulting in him killing her. After Flinch was sent to prison for the murder, Walter wrote the book in the room as an elaborate suicide note, changing the details of his confession into a deranged fantasy. Walter then jumped off the balcony, but survived. The resulting brain damage left him with amnesia, and he was sent to the institute to recover, and met Agatha after being released. Dr. Leary, one of Walter's doctors, read the book and became obsessed with the number, eventually publishing the book under the name Topsy Kretts. Agatha arrives, and tells Walter that he has changed, which is why she hid the skeleton. Convinced that he will kill again, Walter attempts to commit suicide by running into the path of a bus. However, Walter does not go through with it, not wanting Robin to lose a father like he did, and exclaims that 23 is just a number. Walter turns himself in to the police for the murder of Laura. While he awaits sentencing, his lawyer says that the judge will go easy on him because he confessed. Walter declares that this is not the happiest ending, but it is the right one, and expresses hope that things will return to normal for his family once he is released from prison. Laura's body is laid to rest in the cemetery, and Flinch is present, having been released from prison and now at peace. The credits begin with a Bible verse (Numbers 32:23), which reads: "Be sure that your sin will find you out."

Dr. Samantha Unger, CEO of Europa Ventures, narrates the story of the Europa One mission. Six astronauts embark on a privately funded mission to Jupiter's moon Europa in an attempt to find extraterrestrial life. The crew members are commander William Xu, pilot Rosa Dasque, chief science officer Daniel Luxembourg, marine biology science officer Katya Petrovna, junior engineer James Corrigan, and chief engineer Andrei Blok. After six months of mission time, a solar storm hits the ship, knocking out communication with mission control. Blok and Corrigan perform an extravehicular activity (EVA) to repair the system from outside, but an accident rips Blok's suit. While he is being guided back into the airlock, Blok notices that Corrigan's suit has been coated with hydrazine and he cannot enter the airlock or else he would contaminate the rest of the ship. Blok attempts to save Corrigan by taking him out of his suit, but he blacks out from a lack of oxygen. Knowing there is no hope for himself, Corrigan pushes Blok into the airlock, thus propelling himself away from the ship. Stranded, he dies in space; the crew continue with the mission, demoralized by Corrigan's death. After twenty months, the ship goes into orbit around Europa. Its lander lands safely on Europa, but misses its target zone. The crew drills through the ice and releases a probe into the underlying sea. Blok, who is sleep-deprived to the point of concerning the rest of the crew, sees a light outside the ship; he is unable to record it or otherwise convince the crew of its occurrence. The probe is struck by an unknown luminous object and contact with it is lost. Petrovna insists on collecting samples on Europa's surface; the crew votes and she is allowed to go. Analyzing the samples, Luxembourg discovers traces of a unicellular organism. Petrovna sees a blue light in the distance and decides to investigate it. As she approaches the light, the ice below her breaks and she falls through. Her head-mounted camera continues to broadcast, displaying her last moments as blue light is reflected in her eyes. The camera broadcast then cuts out. The crew agrees to leave to report their discovery to Earth, but the engines malfunction. As the lander hurtles back to Europa's surface, Xu unbuckles from his seat to dump water shielding to reduce the impact speed. The ship crashes at the originally targeted landing site. On impact, Xu is killed and the lander is damaged, leaking oxygen and losing heat. It begins to sink into the ice. Blok and Luxembourg put their EVA suits on to make repairs outside the ship. Luxembourg tries to descend but dies as he falls through the ice. Blok knows that there is no chance that he alone will be able to repair the lander before it sinks. Instead, he manages to fix the communication link to the orbiting mother ship, at the expense of turning off the life support systems. Like Petrovna, he sees a blue light and is killed as he falls through the ice. Alone now, Dasque re-establishes communication with Earth; all the collected images and data that have been saved since the solar storm are relayed to Earth via the mothership. The ice cracks and the lander begins to sink. Anticipating her death, Dasque opens the airlock to flood the lander in hopes of revealing the source of the light. As the water rises to the cockpit, she sees a tentacled, bioluminescent creature rising toward her before the camera cuts out. In the epilogue, narrator Samantha Unger confirms that the crew of Europa discovered life as footage plays from an earlier scene of the crew posing in front of the camera.

In 1983, two Russian cosmonauts hear something moving outside their spaceship. The ship then crashes in Kazakhstan. The sole survivor is Konstantin Veshnyakov. The military takes Veshnyakov to a military research facility run by Colonel Semiradov. Veshnyakov cannot remember the crash. The facility's scientist, Yan Rigel, tries and fails to cure the amnesia. Semiradov decides to recruit a controversial psychiatrist named Dr. Tatyana Yuryevna Klimova. Klimova quickly discerns that Veshnyakov shows symptoms of post-traumatic stress. Semiradov shows Klimova that at night, an alien emerges from Veshnyakov's mouth as he sleeps. Semiradov explains the creature emerges every night without Veshnyakov's knowledge, and that it is responsible for Veshnyakov's survival. The facility tried to extract the alien, but it is now symbiotically bonded to Veshnyakov and both will slowly die if separated. Klimova agrees to investigate how to separate Veshnyakov from the alien permanently – much to Rigel's jealous chagrin. Klimova decides she must test how Veshnyakov's hormones react to stress. She provokes him with accusations of abandoning his son and causing his colleague's death. Afterwards, Klimova asks for Veshnyakov to stay in a normal room during daylight hours instead of a cell, to see how he reacts to normal civilian life. She apologizes to Veshnyakov for her harsh words, and he tells her that he only found out about his son one week before his space mission. He had planned to meet his son after going home, but is now stuck in the facility. At night, Klimova interacts with the emerged alien from behind protective glass. She notices it fixate on a toy that belongs to Veshnyakov, and daringly removes the glass so she can give the toy to the alien. The creature ignores Klimova and plays with the toy. But when Klimova tries to touch the creature, it attacks her. Soldiers extract Klimova and contain the creature. Klimova theorizes the alien has merged with Veshnyakov, and it took interest in the toy because it reminds Veshnyakov of his son. She requests to take Veshnyakov to Moscow for treatment. Semiradov reveals this is impossible. His superiors in Moscow want to terminate Veshnyakov, and Semiradov has been lying about their research progress to keep Veshnyakov alive. While reviewing surveillance footage of the alien, Klimova realizes it is edited. She confronts Rigel, and he takes her to see Semiradov feeding live humans to the alien at night. Rigel reveals that the creature needs cortisol from a living, terrified human to keep itself and Veshnyakov alive. Disgusted, Klimova asks Veshnyakov to meet in secret. Veshnyakov incapacitates his guards, and Klimova shows him the bodies of the alien's victims. She explains the alien chose Veshnyakov as its host because his co-pilot had Addison's disease. Veshnyakov reveals he can remember everything the creature experiences, but has been hiding it because he wants the Moscow authorities to approve his release. Klimova is horrified that Veshnyakov could accept sacrificing human lives, but Veshnyakov explains that he will do anything to return to his son and his mother. Semiradov summons Klimova and reveals he knows she spied on the feeding. He defends his actions by explaining the alien is a powerful weapon the Soviets need to maintain peace, and that he only feeds it prisoners who have committed monstrous crimes. Semiradov allows Klimova to watch another feeding. However, Klimova requests to enter the feeding area and sings Veshnyakov's favourite song to the alien. At first, the creature softens and backs away. But when the prisoner tries to run, the creature kills him anyways. Klimova decides she must stop the experiment and help Veshnyakov escape. She convinces Rigel to help her. Then she convinces Veshnyakov that Semiradov will never let him leave. She plans to inject Veshnyakov with hormones that simulate Addison's disease, tricking the alien into rejecting Veshnyakov and permanently separating them. Rigel gives Klimova and Veshnyakov a set of car keys, and then confesses everything to the Moscow authorities by telephone just before Semiradov murders him. Semiradov's soldiers intercept Klimova and Veshnyakov. Cornered, Veshnyakov injects himself with the hormones prematurely, forcing the alien to emerge and attack the soldiers. The resulting chaos allows Klimova to drag Veshnyakov into the car and drive off. But Veshnyakov begins dying, and Klimova realizes he still needs the alien to live. Klimova allows Semiradov to catch up, knowing he will bring the injured alien to Veshnyakov. But before he can, Veshnyakov takes voluntary control of the alien and uses it to kill Semiradov and his men. Klimova spots trucks coming from Moscow thanks to Rigel. However, Veshnyakov decides he must die with the creature to avoid more killing, and shoots himself in the head. Klimova survives and adopts Veshnyakov's son.

In Glasgow, a motorcyclist retrieves an inert young woman from the roadside and places her in the back of a van, where a naked woman dons her clothes. After buying clothes and make-up at a shopping centre, the woman drives the van from town to town, picking up single men with few friends. She lures a man into a dilapidated house. As he undresses, following the woman into a void, he is submerged in a liquid abyss. At a beach, the woman attempts to pick up a swimmer, but is interrupted by the cries of a drowning couple attempting to rescue their dog, as it is pulled out to sea. The swimmer rescues the husband, but the husband rushes back into the water to save his wife and both drown. As the swimmer lies exhausted on the beach, the woman strikes his head with a rock, drags him to the van, and drives away, ignoring the couple's distraught baby. The motorcyclist retrieves the swimmer's belongings, ignoring the baby crying on the beach. The woman visits a nightclub and picks up another man. At the house, he follows her into the void and is submerged in the liquid. Suspended beneath the surface, he sees the swimmer floating naked beside him, alive but bloated and immobile. When he reaches to touch him, the swimmer's body collapses, leaving only his empty skin floating in the liquid as a red mass empties through a trough. The next day, the woman receives a rose from a street vendor, purchased by another man in traffic. She listens to a radio report about the missing family from the beach. The woman enters a dark room and is examined by the motorcyclist. She seduces a lonely man with facial tumours but lets him leave after examining herself in a mirror. The motorcyclist intercepts the man and bundles him into a car, then sets out in pursuit of the woman. In the Scottish Highlands, the woman abandons the van in the fog. She walks to a restaurant and attempts to eat cake, but retches and spits it out. On a bus, she meets a man who offers to help her. At his house, he prepares a meal for her and they watch television. Alone in her room, she examines her body in a mirror. They visit a ruined castle, where the man carries her over a puddle and helps her down some steps. At his house, they kiss and begin to have sex, but the woman stops and examines her genitals. Wandering in a forest, the woman meets a commercial logger and shelters in a bothy. She wakes up to find the logger molesting her. She runs into the wilderness but he catches and attempts to rape her. He tears her skin, revealing a featureless body. As the woman extricates herself from her skin, the man douses her in fuel and burns her alive. The motorcyclist looks out across a snowy field.

While scuba diving near shipwrecks off Bermuda, vacationing couple David Sanders and Gail Berke recover small artifacts, including a glass ampoule with amber-coloured liquid and a gold medallion bearing a woman's image and the letters "S.C.O.P.N." (meaning "Santa Clara, ora pro nobis ", or " Saint Clara, pray for us") and a date, 1714. An unknown sea creature suddenly grabs Gail's wood baton as she probes the wreck's crevices. Panicked, she gets loose from the strap while the baton's end is left shredded. Sanders and Berke seek advice from historian and treasure hunter Romer Treece on the medallion's origin. He identifies the item as Spanish as he palms the ampoule, taking an interest in the couple. The dive-shop clerk notices the ampoule, which in turn attracts the attention of Henri "Cloche" Bondurant, a local drug kingpin for whom the clerk works. When Cloche unsuccessfully tries to buy the ampoule, he begins terrorizing the couple. The ampoule contains medicinal morphine from the Goliath, a ship that sank during World War II with a cargo of munitions and medical supplies. The Goliath is off-limits to divers due to the still-live explosives. Treece concludes that a recent storm has exposed the morphine and unearthed a much older wreck containing Spanish treasure that is beneath Goliath. Treece makes a deal with Cloche to retrieve the ampoules for $1 million, which Cloche can illegally resell for over $3 million, while Treece secretly searches for the treasure. Cloche gives him three days to recover the morphine. Sanders, Berke and Treece make several dives to the wrecks, recovering thousands of ampoules from Goliath and several additional artifacts from the Spanish wreck. They also encounter a huge moray eel, which lives inside the vessel, and was what previously attacked Berke. Adam Coffin, the only survivor from Goliath, joins the venture, but his loyalty shifts when he feels slighted by Treece. When Cloche's men arrive and dump bait into the water to attract sharks, Coffin tells Treece he probably fell asleep without noticing they were in trouble. Through research in Treece's library, the trio reconstructs the lost treasure ship's history and locates a list of valuable items, including a gold pinecone filled with pearls with the letters "EF" engraved on it. The initials identify Elisabeth Farnese, a noblewoman for whom they were made by the King of Spain. Sanders is determined to locate at least one item on the list to establish provenance, as without it, the treasure has less value. Treece plans to destroy the Goliath to prevent Cloche from obtaining the morphine. Cloche attempts to thwart them and recover the morphine himself. Cloche's henchman murders Treece's long-time friend Kevin. Adam betrays Treece and is killed by triggering Treece's booby trap in the lighthouse tower when he tries to steal the recovered morphine stashed there. During the final dive, Cloche is killed by the giant eel, while his henchman Slake is speared by Gail on the surface, and his other henchman Ronald is drowned by David. The Goliath is destroyed in the explosion that Treece ignites. Treece recovers a gold dragon necklace that provides the treasure's needed provenance.

In 1859, a meteorite streaks across the sky and crashes into the Gela Alta glacier in western Greenland, causing a massive explosion that kills an Inuk fisherman. In present-day Copenhagen, Smilla Jaspersen, a transplanted Greenlander, is studying ice crystals at a university lab. Although an Arctic ice specialist, Smilla has not completed her credentials and is unemployed, with a troubled past. When she returns to her apartment complex at the end of the day, she finds the body of six-year-old Isaiah Christiansen, a neighbor Inuk boy. He is lying in the snow by the edge of the building. The police say that he must have been playing and fallen from the roof. Smilla knew he was afraid of heights and, on the roof, sees that his footprints show he ran straight to the edge of the roof, as if threatened. At the morgue Smilla meets with Dr. Lagermann. She is surprised when he tells her that a prominent professor, Dr. Johannes Loyen, performed the autopsy on the boy, who was from a poor working-class family. When she consults with Loyen the next day, he declares the boy's death to be an accident. Unconvinced, Smilla files a complaint with the District Attorney. She goes to Lagermann's home seeking more information, and he says that he found a puncture wound on the boy's thigh, made by a biopsy needle after his death. He also says that Loyen was examining the boy every month. At the funeral, Smilla notices Dr. Andreas Tork, the CEO of Greenland Mining, offering money to Isaiah's mother, who rejects it angrily. Following her husband's accidental death in Greenland in mining, the company had offered her a pension. Detective Ravn from the District Attorney's office agrees to look into the case, but Smilla discovers he is involved with Tork. Smilla tracks down the company's former accountant, and gains access to a company report about activities in Greenland. A neighbor mechanic becomes involved and offers to help her. Detective Ravn threatens Smilla with jail for stealing Greenland Mining property. She agrees to suspend her investigation but, after learning from Isaiah's mother that her husband died from something in the mine's melt water, she continues. Smilla asks her father, Moritz Jaspersen, to help her in making sense of the Expedition Report; he agrees to look into it. At the apartment complex, Smilla searches around Isaiah's former hiding place by a stairwell, and discovers a cassette tape hidden behind the wall. Unable to understand the audio, she takes the tape to a blind audio expert, Licht. Shortly after he tells her that it is Isaiah's father talking to his son, Licht is murdered. Smilla barely escapes with her life and the mechanic picks her up. They follow their pursuers to a ship, which Tork is preparing for another Greenland expedition. Smilla's father shows her medical x-rays from the report, which reveal that a type of lethal, prehistoric "Arctic worm," long thought to be extinct, apparently was the cause of the "accidental" deaths of mine workers. When the worm entered individual's bodies and attacked organs, it caused toxic shock and death. Aided by others, Smilla gets aboard the mining ship as an employee. She meets Nils Jakkelsen, who helps her discover videotapes that reveal the mining company had discovered an energy-producing meteorite along with the parasitic worm. Tork believes the meteorite will give his company a dominant position in the industry. There is also a video tape of Prof. Loyen medically examining Isaiah. Smilla is chased throughout the ship by Tork's men, who kill Nils. Smilla is helped again by the mechanic, who tells her he has been working for the government to investigate the company. As the ship approaches shore, Smilla leaves and makes her way across the frozen landscape. She finds the entrance to the Greenland Mining ice cave, where the company is conducting research on the meteorite. Prof. Loyen is among those present. Tork explains that Isaiah's father was a diver who went into the water around the meteorite and contracted the parasitic worm. Isaiah was also potentially infected as well. Prof. Loyen then monitored Isaiah for a time to see if he was indeed infected. An armed confrontation takes place, but Smilla is rescued by the mechanic and another man. During a struggle, Prof. Loyen falls into the icy pool (containing said meteorite) in the cave, instantly freezing to death (as he sinks below the depths). Tork is wounded and runs out across the ice. Smilla pursues him and recounts what happened with Isaiah. Tork had followed the boy home in hopes of recovering the recording and in the resulting pursuit, Isaiah fled to the roof of his building and fell off the edge. From outside, the mechanic/agent sets off a powerful bomb that destroys the cave and buries all still inside. The resulting waves cause Tork to fall from the ice and drown in the freezing water. Smilla gazes over the landscape of ice and snow, the land of her childhood.

In the near future, Michael Jennings is a reverse engineer; he analyzes his clients' competitors' technology and recreates it with improvements. To protect his clients' intellectual property and himself, Jennings undergoes memory wipes to remove knowledge of his engineering with aid of his friend Shorty. Jennings is contacted by his college roommate James Rethrick, the CEO of technology company Allcom. Rethrick offers Jennings a lengthy three-year job, during which he will be required to stay on Allcom's campus, in exchange for company stock. Jennings is hesitant but agrees. After being injected with the memory marker, Jennings is given a tour of the campus, where he meets and flirts with biologist Dr. Rachel Porter. Rethrick then introduces Jennings to his work partner, physicist William Dekker. Three years later, Jennings wakes from the memory wipe and is congratulated by Rethrick. Jennings finds that the Allcom stock he earned is valued at over US$92 million, but when he goes to see his lawyer to get the funds, he discovers that he had given all the stock away just weeks ago. Further, he is given an envelope claiming to be his possessions on entering Allcom, but it contains a random assortment of items. Confused, Jennings soon finds himself detained by the FBI. Agent Dodge accuses Jennings of having access to classified government designs that had been taken by Dekker, who is now dead. Jennings cannot answer due to the memory wipe, but finds a means to escape using the items in the envelope. As he evades the FBI, Rethrick's right-hand-man John Wolfe sees Jennings walking away and warns Rethrick they have a problem. Jennings meets with Shorty to try to figure out what happened, but then sees a lottery number result on a television, the numbers matching those on a fortune cookie message in the envelope. He realizes that he must have built a machine at Allcom to see into the future, planting items in that envelope to help fix things. At Allcom, Rethrick tries to use Jennings' machine, but instead finds that it was jury-rigged to go offline after Jennings had left. Rethrick studies Jennings' habits while at Allcom and discovers that he became romantically involved with Porter and left a secret message to meet her at a cafe later that day. Rethrick sends a body double to try to coerce Jennings to turn over the envelope, but the real Porter shows up and rescues Jennings. The two elude the FBI and Rethrick's men. While hiding, they find that the stamps on the envelopes contain microdot images taken from the device, showing newspaper headlines from the future that while Allcom became incredibly successful with the device, it led to crises on the stock markets, international political strife, a pandemic and the United States launching a pre-emptive nuclear strike. They agree that the machine must be destroyed. Using the last items in the envelope, Jennings and Porter gain access to Allcom and the machine, while separately the FBI have started to investigate Allcom. Jennings discovers the circuit he rigged and fixes it, while booby-trapping the machine to be destroyed in a few minutes. He uses the machine one last time to see himself being shot at by an FBI agent in the catwalks above the machine. Rethrick, Wolfe, and other men arrive, and Jennings and Porter escape to the catwalks. Wolfe tries to use the machine to help track Jennings, while Rethrick corners the pair on the catwalk. FBI agents storm the lab, and one appears on the catwalk, the same tableau that Jennings had seen. As the FBI fires, a watch from the envelope beeps, and Jennings dodges in time for the bullet to fatally hit Rethrick. Wolfe is killed as Jennings' booby-trap goes off and destroys the machine. After the chaos dies down and the FBI begin a full investigation, Agent Dodge finds the watch Jennings had used, but consequently hides it and declares him dead. Elsewhere, Jennings, Porter, and Shorty have moved to the countryside. Shorty was able to use his influence to rescue the cage of a pair of red-rumped parrots Porter had been raising at Allcom. Recalling the fortune cookie message from the envelope, Jennings looks in the cage and finds a lottery ticket for the winning jackpot of US$90 million.

Judge Steven Hardin (Michael Douglas) is an idealistic Los Angeles judge who becomes frustrated when the technicalities of the law prevent the prosecution of three criminals. The first is a man who was charged with murdering several elderly women for their welfare money. The second and third are two men who were accused of raping and killing a young boy named Daniel Lewin as part of a suspected child pornography ring. The suspected child murderers, Lawrence Monk and Arthur Cooms, attracted the attention of two police officers when they were driving slowly late at night. The police officers suspected that the van's occupants might be burglars. After checking the license plate for violations, the officers pulled the van over for expired paperwork. They also claimed to have smelled marijuana, and then saw a bloody shoe inside the van. However, the reason for stopping the van turned out to be spurious: the paperwork was actually submitted on time, it was merely processed late. Since the traffic stop was illegal, based on the fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine, Hardin has no choice but to exclude any evidence discovered as a result of the traffic stop, including the bloody shoe. Hardin becomes even more distraught when Daniel's father, Dr. Harold Lewin, attempts to shoot Monk and Cooms in court, but misses and shoots one of the arresting officers instead; Dr. Lewin is arrested. While on a visit to Dr. Lewin, Hardin learns that another boy had been discovered by the police, raped and murdered in the same manner as Daniel. Outraged, Hardin visits his friend, Judge Caulfield (Hal Holbrook), who tells him of the existence of a modern-day Star Chamber, a group of judges that identifies criminals who cannot be brought to justice through the judicial system, and takes action against them using a hired assassin. As there is a vacancy present, one of the judges, James Culhane, had committed suicide earlier, Hardin participates in two of the Star Chamber proceedings, and the assassin is dispatched to kill two other unrelated murderers who were released on technicalities despite their own confessions. After receiving a phone call that Dr. Lewin has committed suicide by overdosing on sleeping pills while in jail, Hardin contracts the assassin to murder Monk and Cooms. Police detective Harry Lowes (Yaphet Kotto) learns from a car thief named Stanley Flowers that three men were actually responsible for the crime. While at a party, Hardin learns about the new evidence. Realizing that he and the Star Chamber have just sentenced Monk and Cooms to die for a crime that they did not commit, Hardin implores the Star Chamber to recall the assassin, but is told by the other judges that the hit cannot be canceled. For the judges' protection, there is a cut-out between them and the assassin; they do not know who he is, and he doesn't know who they are. They tell Hardin that, although an occasional mistake is inevitable and regrettable, what they are doing still serves society's greater good. They argue that Monk and Cooms are clearly criminals who are guilty of numerous other crimes, even if they are not guilty of the specific crime for which the group convicted them. Hardin makes it clear that he does not accept their reasoning, and Caulfield warns him to back down because the members of the group will do whatever they have to in order to protect themselves. Hardin decides to make an effort to stop Monk and Cooms from being killed, so he tracks them down in an abandoned warehouse and attempts to warn them. However, Hardin has stumbled across their illegal drug operation, and they don't believe him. They attack Hardin, but the hitman, disguised as a police officer, arrives and kills both of them before they can kill Hardin. The hitman prepares to kill Hardin, but Lowes arrives at the last moment and kills the hitman. Finally, as the Star Chamber decides another "case" without Hardin, Hardin sits with Lowes outside in a car, recording their conversation.

In an airport, Lone Man is being instructed on his mission by Creole. The mission itself is left unstated and the instructions are cryptic, including such phrases as "Everything is subjective," "The universe has no center and no edges; reality is arbitrary," and "Use your imagination and your skills." After the meeting at the airport, he travels to Madrid and then on to Seville, meeting several people in cafés and on trains along the way. Each meeting has the same pattern: he orders two espressos at a cafe and waits, his contact arrives and in Spanish asks, "You don't speak Spanish, right?" in different ways, to which he responds, "No." The contacts tell him about their individual interests such as molecules, art, or film, then the two of them exchange matchboxes. Inside each matchbox that Lone Man receives, is a code written on a small piece of paper. He reads them, and then eat the paper. These coded messages lead him to his next rendezvous. He repeatedly encounters a woman who is always either completely nude or wearing only a transparent raincoat. She invites him to have sex with her but he declines, stating that he never has sex while he is working. One phrase that Creole, the man in the airport, tells him is repeated throughout the movie: "He who thinks he is bigger than the rest must go to the cemetery. There he will see what life really is: a handful of dirt." This phrase is sung in a peteneras flamenco song in a club in Seville at one point in his journey. In Almería, he is given a ride in a pickup truck - driven by a companion of the Mexican - on which the words La vida no vale nada ('life is worth nothing') are painted, a phrase Guitar says to him in Seville, and he is taken to Tabernas desert. There lies a fortified and heavily guarded compound. After observing the compound from afar, he somehow penetrates its defenses and waits for his target inside the target's office. The target asks how he got in, and he answers, "I used my imagination." After garroting the target with a guitar string, he rides back to Madrid, to the room where he disrobes from his latest fresh suit. Folding it, and locking it away, he changes into a sweatsuit bearing the national flag of Cameroon. Before exiting the train station onto a crowded sidewalk he throws away his last matchbox.

Derek Echevaro, a gifted mathematics student at the University of Cincinnati is haunted by what he believes was a UFO he saw as a child. In 2017, a UFO briefly appears over Cincinnati International Airport and causes electromagnetic interference to the ATC broadcast. Cover stories dismissing it initially as a UAV and later a Gulfstream IV are released, but Derek does calculations that invalidate the airport's claims. He decrypts the ATC interference, ascertaining it is the fine-structure constant in 14 digit chunks. Derek later finds an unexplained executable running on his computer, which prompts him to reformat the interference into binary code. His obsession begins straining his relationships with his friends and roommates Lee and Natalie. Derek’s efforts attract the attention of Franklin Ahls, a senior official with the clandestine FBI Committee on Aerial Phenomena. Ahls is in Ohio with a team of scientists overseeing the coverup and trying to decipher the message, and believes it is from at least an extraterrestrial Type 1 civilisation. Believing he has a limited time to decipher the interference, Derek approaches his professor, Dr. Rebecca Hendricks, for help. Although initially apprehensive, she helps him investigate the cell phone signal disruptions that took place during the UFO incursion, but ultimately concedes there is a missing unit of measurement in the calculations. However, during a lecture on eigenvalues and eigenvectors, Hendricks deduces and tells Derek the missing unit of measurement to decipher the coordinates is 21 centimeters (the wavelength of neutral Hydrogen). Borrowing Lee’s car, Derek travels to the coordinates and briefly observes the UFO. It broadcasts a further signal, before disappearing again. Derek is briefly detained by armed operatives, before being released into a car with Ahls, who confirms the UFO operators put the fine-structure constant in their message to help build a common mathematical language. Ahls tells Derek the new message is more complex and likely contains 3D coordinates to the extraterrestrials location. He confirms humanity is not alone in the universe, and offers to recruit Derek to assist in calculating a more refined version of the FSC to ensure the interstellar location they determine is accurate.

In 1995 in the Ura Valley, Bhutan, four friends—Greg, Fiona, Ruthie, and Paul—go hiking on a mountain. Paul hears a strange whistling and falls into a crevice. Greg finds him in an almost catatonic state, staring at a massive, ancient humanoid skeleton with inhuman features embedded in the cave wall. Paul warns Greg against touching him, or he will die. Ignoring the warning, Greg carries Paul out. The group takes refuge at an empty house as a snowstorm hits. The next day Ruthie is chased by a tall creature wearing robes, which disappears. That night, the paralyzed Paul whispers something into Ruthie's ear. The following morning, they wake up to find Paul sitting near the bridge they crossed yesterday. As Greg shouts at Paul, a dazed Ruthie stabs Greg and slices Fiona's throat, then pushes them off the cliff. She shares an entranced look with Paul before throwing herself off too. Paul helplessly watches, shedding a single tear. In Missouri 2018, former detective James Lasombra is grieving the deaths of his wife Allison and son Henry in a car crash a year prior. He is friends with his neighbor Nora, a widowed single mother. Nora's daughter Amanda runs away leaving a message in the bathroom that reads "The Empty Man made me do it". Searching her bedroom for clues, James discovers a flier from a group called the Pontifex Institute with the word tulpa written on the back. Amanda's friend Davara reveals that Amanda encouraged them to summon the Empty Man, a local legend. To summon him, one must find an empty bottle on a bridge, blow into it, then think of the Empty Man. The next day, Davara witnesses Amanda whispering into their friend Brandon's ear. James investigates the bridge and finds the empty bottle. He blows on it, goes underneath the bridge, and discovers the hanged bodies of Brandon and the rest of Amanda's friends with the same message found in the bathroom. Davara sees the Empty Man, who kills her with a pair of scissors. A brief flash shows Davara holding herself by the throat and stabbing herself with the scissors. The police rule her death a suicide. James researches the Pontifex Institute, discovering it is a cult that has beliefs originating from places like Bhutan and in tulpas. He believes he hears the Empty Man that night and is besieged by nightmares. He travels to the institute and sits in on a talk by cult leader Arthur Parsons. He is alarmed at the leader's references to the Empty Man, claiming him to be an entity that provides his followers with what they want as long as they do his bidding. James begins to think he sees the Empty Man. He follows cult members and investigates a cabin in the woods where he finds files on Amanda, her friends, Paul, and himself. He witnesses the cult performing a fire ritual but is spotted and pursued. He suspects that Amanda is now a member of the cult and informs Nora that she is not safe. He takes Nora to a hotel to hide. It is revealed that the pair were having an affair and he was with Nora when Allison and Henry died. Suffering from hallucinations, James kidnaps a cult member, Garrett, and asks him what is happening before brutally beating him. Garrett says a man in the hospital is the Empty Man's speaker. The man turns out to be Paul, who is regularly visited by cult members to get messages from the entity. James finds Amanda in Paul's hospital room. James calls Nora, but she does not know who he is. Amanda explains that Paul is dying from the strain of being the Empty Man, and that the cult needs a new vessel. She tells James that he is a tulpa, a new vessel for the being, and that his memories and relationships were fabricated by her and the cult to ensure the deity's connection through his pain and loss. The anger, grief, and fear in his life were key to allowing connection with the Empty Man. According to Amanda, James has only existed for a few days. James breaks down and finds himself in a limbo-like plane, where he is chased and caught with the being entering his body. He experiences flashbacks and distortions that show his memories wavering and distorting out of existence. Back in the hospital, James executes Paul. James finds himself surrounded by members of the hospital staff. They bow to him, now bound by the nameless entity.