A family man is drafted to fight in a future war where the fate of humanity relies on his ability to confront the past.
With the world fighting a losing battle against the multitudes of a fierce and unstoppable extraterrestrial invader, humankind is living on borrowed time. Amid chaos, and an impending Armageddon, the former Green Beret First Sergeant, biology teacher, and doting father-of-one Dan Forester, finds himself in the ruins of an alien-infested, peril-laden urban maze, struggling for survival and answers along with a doomed army of untried soldiers. Now, a handful of defenders carries the weight of the world's desperate hopes. Can they come by a second chance?—Nick Riganas
The former Iraq military leader and presently science teacher Dan Forester lives in the suburbs with his beloved wife Emmy Forester and their young daughter Muri. Dan aims to work in a research laboratory and hates his estranged father James Forester, who left his family when he was a boy. During the 2022 World Cup, the final soccer game is interrupted by soldiers from the future that explain that they need people from the past to help them, since aliens are destroying the earthlings, and they cannot stand anymore the alien forces. Dan is forced to enlist and to wear a bracelet to track him. He unsuccessfully tries to defect and jumps with other people thirty years in the future to Miami Beach, Florida. However, only a few survive since there was an error in the location. Dan becomes the commander of the survivors due to his military experienced and they are ordered to rescue a research team in a nearby location before the airplanes drop bombs in the city. They find that the researchers are dead, and Dan retrieves twelve samples of specific research. Only a few of them survives the alien attack in Miami and the survivors are brought to a military camp at the Dominican Republican. Soon Dan learns that the commander of the military resistance is his daughter, Colonel Muri Forester, who is researching a means to destroy the powerful alien female that breeds uninterruptedly and resists to the toxins used to exterminate the males. Dan helps her with the research and now they are the last hope on Earth to destroy the alien invaders.—Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
In December 2022, biology teacher and former Green Beret, Dan Forester, fails to get a job at a prestigious research center. While he is watching the World Cup at a Christmas party, soldiers from the year 2051 arrive to warn that humanity is on the brink of extinction due to a war with alien invaders: the Whitespikes. The Whitespikes will arrive in November 2048 and kill the majority of humanity three years later. In response, members of the world's militaries are sent into the future through a wormhole device called the Jumplink, but fewer than 30% survive deployment to return in seven days, prompting a worldwide draft.
After a year of the draft and a growing anti-war movement, there is little hope for humanity's survival. Dan receives a notice that he has been drafted and reports with other draftees to basic training. Dan deduces with fellow draftee Charlie that in order to prevent a paradox, those drafted have already died before the war starts. The draftees are sent forward in time to a battlefield in Miami Beach but few survive, having been dropped in the incorrect location above the city. The draftees are ordered by Colonel Forester to rescue nearby lab personnel before the area is sterilized. The draftees discover the lab personnel dead but recover their research. Dan radios to command about the situation, and he is told that no help will be sent to rescue the stranded troops. Many of the draftees are killed except for Dan, Charlie, and Dorian, a battle-hardened soldier on his third deployment to the future.
The survivors wake up in a military encampment in the Dominican Republic. Dan is asked to report to Colonel Forester, who turns out to be his grown daughter Muri. She requests him to accompany her on a mission to capture a female Whitespike, which are rarer than the males typically encountered. They trap and cage the female, only to have hundreds of males descend on their position. As the helicopter with the female lifts off, Dan and Muri escape to a beach and radio for rescue. Muri reveals that Dan, dissatisfied with his life after losing the job, he abandons his family and dies in a car crash in 2030. Dan, Muri and the female Whitespike are transported to a fortified oil rig close to Port Nelson, where the Jumplink is located.
Dan and his daughter work on a toxin that can kill the captured female. They find a match for killing the aliens, just as they start to breach the base. As the Whitespikes attack the base, the formerly captive female spears Colonel Forester with one of her spikes. She plummets from the gantry and Dan follows her off just before he is transported back to the past with the toxin to mass produce it. Dan tries to give the toxin to the military so it can be sent back to the future, but learns that the Jumplink is offline, having been destroyed by the Whitespikes. The world has become chaotic with the news that the Jumplink is offline, foretelling the war was lost.
While Dan brainstorms with his wife, Emmy, she deduces that the Whitespikes did not arrive in 2048, but came much earlier. Dan consults with Charlie and Martin, a high school student with an interest in volcanoes and they theorize that the Whitespikes have been on Earth since the Millennium Eruption in the year 946, and global warming caused their release when they thawed out and emerged from under the ice caps. Dan leads a mission to Russia with Charlie, Dorian, a few surviving future soldiers, and his estranged father James to prove his theory. The team finds a crashed alien ship at the Academy of Sciences Glacier on Komsomolets Island. They debate telling the world about the problem, but decide to end the threat right then and there. Once inside, they realize that the Whitespikes are not aliens themselves, but rather bio-engineered organisms possibly used as a planet-clearing weapon or cattle by another alien race. The team injects several of the dormant Whitespikes with the toxin; this kills those injected but wakes the others, and most of the team is killed. Terminally ill with cancer and wanting to die on his own terms, Dorian remains behind to blow up the ship with C-4 and the explosion kills all but one of the Whitespikes. Dan and his father track down the one female that has escaped, leaving them and Charlie as the team's only survivors.
Content knowing that the war is averted and humanity is saved, Dan brings James home to meet his wife and daughter, determined not to make the same mistakes that Muri had warned him about from her future.
