Surgeon Marcus Ford's Trauma Unit at the Willowbrook Medical Center is on the front line, fighting diseases that rage through South Central, L.A.'s violent, poverty-stricken inner city. But suddenly Ford finds himself battling an insidious new enemy.. "Patients brought in to the emergency room begin to develop routine infections that suddenly bloom out of control. None of the drugs in the vast arsenal of modern medicine can check the symptoms ... or prevent the bacteria from multiplying. As more and more cases appear, and infected patients throughout L.A. start to die, Ford knows he is witnessing the onset of a mass epidemic - a modern-day plague.. "Then the horror strikes home. Ford's thirteen-year-old daughter contracts the life-threatening infection. Her only hope of survival is Omega, a radical, genetically engineered antibiotic that is only rumored to exist. As Ford's search for the phantom drug becomes a frantic race against time, his sole ally is Helen Wray, a pharmaceutical executive who wants to find Omega for reasons of her own. But when Ford becomes a prime suspect in a series of suspicious deaths, he realizes that he can trust no one.