After the brutal murder of two employees at a computer antivirus multinational, a corporate executive unravels a shocking conspiracy and must outmatch his adversaries before he becomes the next victim.

SYNOPSIS:

Act 1 Summary

On a quiet afternoon in a suburban park, MYRA and PETE, two Synthetica employees, are brutally shot to death by WALKER, their coworker. That evening, BRIAN visits the crime scene where he meets DETECTIVE CAMPBELL and identifies the dead. At a company quarterly meeting the next morning, Brian sits with KATE, his friend in I.T., and they discuss business and the deaths from the night before. After the meeting, they see Synthetica CEO TOM talking with two company unknowns: HARGROVE and CARR.

Later that day, Brian delivers Myra’s and Pete’s belongings to their families. Pete’s wife mentions a bank account she didn’t know about containing a large sum. Myra’s wife hands Brian a thumb drive containing spreadsheets filled with dates and dollar figures in the millions, as well as a letter from an insurance company showing Myra was insured for $1.5 million, by Synthetica. Brian mentions this to BEN, his boss, and is firmly rebuffed. When he goes home that night he visits BECKY, his neighbor, to ask Becky’s boyfriend, MARTIN, to move his car out of Brian’s assigned spot. The next day he approaches PRAD, a company attorney, who feigns ignorance about Peter’s bank account and the insurance policies on Peter and Myra. Brian meets at Synthetica headquarters with Detective Campbell, who tells Brian he’s already met with Hargrove, who was accompanied by Prad. After talking with Detective Campbell, Brian takes JOYCE aside and looks into the personnel files for Hargrove, Walker and Carr and sees they all work in the Global Infrastructure division. They’re also highly paid, with stock options well above their pay grade. Then, with MINDY’s help, he discovers that Hargrove’s team of five, now with two dead, seems to have no organizational chart and no discernable budget. Brian decides he has to know more.

Act 2 Summary

When Hargrove and Carr realize they’re being watched, Joyce and Mindy are fired, but not before Mindy shares with Brian that Global Infrastructure is paid out of a foreign slush fund, and that millions of dollars leave the accounts for destinations around the world within days of arriving. Brian examines the spreadsheets on the thumb drive, and shares what he’s found with Kate, who agrees to investigate. The next morning, Brian discovers Joyce and Mindy have been fired. He calls Mindy on her mobile phone, who tells him Hargrove was there when she was let go. Later, at a coffee shop, Kate fills Brian in on a very scary Global Infrastructure team. Hargrove is a former National Security Agency cyber threat analyst. Walker worked for a disgraced defense contractor tied to a civilian massacre in Iraq. And Carr is a twice-convicted hacker who, before his stint in federal prison, infiltrated networks using the name Wendigo.

Kate examines code from several of the most destructive computer viruses from the past decade, and shares with Brian that they were all created by Carr. Brian then pays a visit to former Synthetica employee and Global Infrastructure director GREG PAXTON, who tells him nothing and alerts Hargrove. Hargrove directs Carr to monitor Brian, and sends Walker to copy the hard drive of Brian’s laptop, and search his office and home. Hargrove confronts Brian, who pushes back, and Hargrove leaves after making veiled threat. After looking at Hargrove’s and Carr’s personnel files, TERRI pays a higher price: Walker beats her to death in the parking garage.

Hargrove’s threat scares Brian, who drives to a gun store. The GUNSHOP OWNER quickly reads Brian and offers him a one-time offer: an intensive, all-night firearms training session. When Brian walks out into the sunlight the next morning, he heads to the office to sit down with Ben to talk about Hargrove’s threat. Ben tells him not to worry, and mentions that TERRI was killed the previous evening. Kate visits Brian in his office, and sees Carr is monitoring his webcam. Detective Campbell arrives, accompanied by SPECIAL AGENT TORRES, and Brian shares what he knows. Special Agent Torres knows of Carr, and Detective Campbell cautions Brian to be very careful.

After Hargrove and Carr examine the copy of Brian’s hard drive, but find nothing. Hargrove then directs Walker to kill Brian and make it look like an accident. Kate and Brian meet at the coffee shop, and Kate grills Brian about his plans for the future before sharing her plans with him. Meanwhile, Walker breaks into Brian’s condo and engineers a natural gas leak. Later, as Brian sips a drink in a neighborhood bar, Becky and Martin accidently ignite the leaking gas, the explosion killing them and destroying the complex. Brian arrives soon after to witness the destruction. At Synthetica, Hargrove, Carr and Walker discuss the destruction, assuming Brian is dead. Brian checks into a hotel and calls Detective Campbell, who pointedly asks Brian if he owns a gun.

Brian returns to the gun shop, and the Gunshop Owner explains he can’t bypass the waiting period for selling the gun, then puts the gun and a box of bullets on the counter, turns his back and lets Brian walk out with it. At the office Kate takes Brian to the cafeteria, where Carr is eating. They use a security camera to see the passcode for Carr’s military-grade, encrypted hard drive. It spells Wendigo. Minutes later, Hargrove and Carr are shocked to discover that Brian is alive, and Hargrove again directs Walker to kill him.

Act 3 Summary

That night, Brian is working late. When he leaves the building and enters the parking garage stairwell, Walker is there. They fight, and Walker savagely brutalizes Brian, who is finally able to draw his pistol and shoot Walker to death. As Walker’s blood flow across the floor, Brian calls Detective Campbell.

Hargrove and Carr are working in the Global Infrastructure office when Brian enters, bruised and limping, gun in hand. He confronts Hargrove and Carr, and tells them Walker is dead. Hargrove tries to bargain with him, also confessing his role in the killings, but Brian declines, tossing the gun to Hargrove, who points it at him and pulls the trigger, only to discover the gun isn’t loaded. FBI agents enter, along with Special Agent Torres and Detective Campbell, to arrest Hargrove and Carr, but Hargrove is just as quickly released to the NSA. As Brian protests, he sees Kate, dressed much like an FBI agent. As they leave together, Carr’s hard drive has disappeared.

A few days later at the office, Brian calls Kate, but she’s gone, having left all of her personal items behind. Brian sends Kate an email to her personal email address. The subject line: “You did it, didn't you?” Minutes later, Brian is called into Ben’s office and is fired. Brian and Mindy sit at the coffee shop, both looking for work. As Mindy tells Brian key Synthetica execs have been fired, a virus locks up her laptop, then vanishes. Later, Brian gets an email from Kate, inviting him to move to the Maldives. Brian calls an airline, but hangs up. That night, he dreams about Kate. The following day, JEFF, a hiring manager, tells Brian that Synthetica has blackballed him. At the coffee shop, a dejected Brian gets a call from Kate, who invites him to join her as she rolls out the next half dozens viruses, the cures for which are given away to non-corporate users, with part of the profits from corporate sales going to humanitarian causes.

The next morning, Brian calls the airline again, and this time he doesn’t hang up, continuing the conversation as cars spill out onto the roads, and an airliner rises from takeoff to slowly bisect the morning sky.

Trailer: https://vimeo.com/488361104/ee23308635

THREAT