Ben McIntyre knows that a meteor hit his hometown of Ada, South Carolina. He also knows that many of the town's residents vanished, along with all physical evidence of the meteor. But he's baffled that no else seems to have noticed. He tried to get his parents, his friends, and his teachers to see, but after years of ridicule, Ben gave up on them. At seventeen, he left Ada and never looked back. Now in his twenties, he's majoring in geology and has collected evidence of similar meteor strikes all over the world. He's onto something, but he doesn't know what exactly. Then someone starts tampering with his research. To make matters worse, an annoying teenager named Gar starts calling Ben about an old lunchbox that's full of his fifteen-year-old research on the meteor. As if he has the time to dredge up the past! But Ben soon learns that Gar isn't really a teenager. In fact, Gar isn't human at all... So why is he in Ada? Ben and Gar join forces with two friends to unravel the mystery, but someone-or something- really doesn't want them to learn the answer to that question.