A small town in Siberia is quarantined for several months. People are dying of a mysterious illness, the source of which lies hidden in the water. The survivors hide in their apartments, but the contaminated water flows through their homes. Self-defence groups and despondent loners hunting their own kind roam through the empty streets. In an attempt to save her mother’s life, the heroine ventures out into the unknown, so that she can overcome her fear and attempt to rekindle her relationship with the outside world, which is now humanity’s mortal enemy.

A boy from a remote Ural village, who grew up without a father in a large family, managed not only to survive the hardships of a wartime childhood and post-war devastation, but also to become at the origins of the creation of the Group A anti-terrorist unit, which would later become known as the Alpha Group.

Year 2013. Ukraine. Navy officer Maxim Fadeev comes from St. Petersburg to the Crimea, after receiving a telegram about the death of his grandfather.

1960. There's an outbreak of smallpox in Moscow. This incurable deadly disease was considered conquered in the USSR. To fight the possible epidemic the KGB assigns colonel Shilov. He dives into the struggle at once because he has an old account to settle with smallpox. The task is to locate all those infected and stop the spread of the virus. But it is not an easy mission. The infection has spread to the underworld of the capital. Shilov must look for answers in the depths of the criminal world, unearthing its inhabitants and secrets.