The cabin is operated by an exiled Outcome operative, Number Three, who, upon arrival, informs Cross that he broke the previous mission record by two days. Meanwhile, the Blackbriar and Treadstone programs are publicly exposed, leading the FBI and the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence to investigate the CIA Director Ezra Kramer, Deputy Director Pamela Landy, Blackbriar supervisor Noah Vosen, and Treadstone clinical researcher Dr. Albert Hirsch. Kramer requests help from Eric Byer, a retired US Air Force colonel responsible for overseeing the CIA's clandestine operations. Byer discovers potentially damaging video on the Internet in which the lead researchers for Treadstone and Outcome appear together at professional functions in public. To prevent the Treadstone investigation from finding and revealing Outcome's top-secret scientific advances, Byer decides to terminate Outcome and all of its agents. He sees this sacrifice as acceptable because the government has already initiated next-generation "beta programs," including the supersoldier project LARX. Byer deploys an unmanned drone to Alaska to destroy Number Three's cabin and kill both him and Cross. Cross hears the drone's approach and leaves the cabin moments before a missile destroys it with Number Three inside. Cross continues to be tracked and escapes the immediate area to higher ground. As the drone is entering its second attack run, he quickly tapes a Mylar thermal blanket and metal bowl to his thigh, causing the drone to break lock on the signal emitted by Cross's electronic ID implant. He subsequently brings the drone down with a sniper rifle. Realizing that his superiors have ordered his assassination, Cross removes the tracking device implanted in his thigh and forces it down the throat of an attacking wolf. A second drone soon arrives and obliterates the wolf. Byer naturally assumes that Cross has been killed. Byer engineers the death of other Outcome assets through poisoned yellow chems. To erase the Treadstone-Outcome link, Hirsch dies of an apparent heart attack before he can testify before the U.S. Senate. Byer also tries to eliminate Outcome's private research lab by chemically inducing scientist Dr. Donald Foite into committing a murder-suicide. The only survivor is geneticist Dr. Marta Shearing. When a team of CIA assassins attacks Shearing in her home she is rescued by Cross who convinces her to help him. He saw press coverage about her survival of the murder-suicide at the lab and sees her as his last chance to get the special medication he needs to maintain his enhanced mental abilities at least long enough to get them both out of imminent danger. Cross and Shearing travel to Manila, Philippines, where the so-called chems are manufactured, for the purpose of weaning him off of the meds without sacrificing his superior intelligence in the process. In Manila, Cross and Shearing bluff their way into the facility that houses the biological materials necessary for his continued high functioning. Byer contacts the factory's security staff, but Cross and Shearing manage to escape. Byer orders LARX-03, a chemically-conditioned supersoldier, to take them down. They take shelter in a cheap hotel room where Shearing helps Cross recover from the flu-like symptoms of permanently weaning off the mind-enhancing drug. During the night he hallucinates about his initiation into Outcome under Byer's supervision. Later, presumably the following morning, police begin surrounding the seedy hotel while Shearing is away buying medicine. She screams out a warning to Cross, who escapes and rescues Shearing from pursuing police officers. Cross and Shearing steal a motorcycle, pursued by both the police and LARX-03. After a fantastically convoluted pursuit through the streets and marketplaces of Manila, the police lose the trail and LARX-03 fatally crashes into a concrete pillar. Shearing and Cross abandon their damaged motorcycle and are spirited away by an enterprising Filipino boatman.

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