Coulter Stevens (Gyllenhaal) is an American Army pilot, stationed in Afghanistan. He mysteriously appears aboard a Chicago commuter train. Not as Coulter Stevens, but in the body of a Chicago teacher. He has no recollection of how he got there. Eight minutes later, the train blows up, killing all those aboard. He wakes up disoriented, finding himself strapped in an isolation chamber. Coulter is the guinea pig of a scientific experiment: a sick, perverse experiment, of quantum proportions