In a future where the most popular sporting event is a bloody gladiator competition that pits genetically engineered life forms in a fight to the death, Dr. Silas Williams is the brilliant geneticist tasked with creating the U.S. entrant. Desperate to win, his superiors engage an experimental supercomputer to design a highly specialized killing machine, its genome never before seen on earth. When the creature demonstrates inexplicable strength, speed, and—most disquietingly—intelligence, Silas calls in Dr. Vidonia João, an expert in extraterrestrial biology. As the contest approaches, the pair race to understand the horror wrought by the computer's cold logic, and their scientific curiosity soon gives way to sheer terror.