Antartica, 2006: the international oil group Alpha Petrolium is drilling for oil illegally whilst their head, William Williamson, is trying to convince the UN to lift the South Pole ban on the development of minerals. The death of a driller leads to an investigation by Dr Svetlana Bloem-Coetzee and microbiologist Braam Steenberg. They discover that the worker was exposed to a strange virus possibly brought to the surface by the oil drilling process.