In 2002, a young archaeology intern named Pouya Gol locates an airtight chamber beneath the raging sand-thick winds of Iran's Great Salt Desert. Gol descends into the space and emerges an hour later with two strange sealed cylinders, both of which refuse to open. He also emerges with enough absorbed radiation to kill a man a dozen times over, yet walks away unharmed. Echelon 6 Agent Mike Charles is appraised of the incident but despite his best efforts, fails to learn anything more about Pouya Gol and his two cylinders, which promptly vanish. Now, more than a dozen years later, Mike and his partner, Agent John Clark, will take another stab at unraveling the mystery surrounding the cylinders. Armed with Gol's new name and location, they find the scientist but initially don't realize what a Pandora's Box the otherworldly cylinders truly are. When they do, John must devise a radical scheme to force the unspeakable evil they find back into the box.