After losing his ophthalmology practice to AmeriCare, a giant conglomerate, and then his wife and two daughters in an airline tragedy, Dr John Stapleton's life is reduced to Ashes. He re-trains in forensic pathology and moves to the cold, indifferent, concrete maze of New York. There Stapleton believes himself past caring - yet his suspicions are aroused as virulent and lethal illnesses begin to strike the young, the old and the virulent regardless.