Synopsis
A gray-blue desolate wasteland. Devoid of any life. Utterly bleak. Gusts of wind blow slivers of ice around jagged rocks and giant shards of stone. A lone man breaks the monotony of this wilderness, making his way slowly around the rocks. He wears a tunic with laced sandals. In his left hand a circular shield, and in his right a gleaming double-edged sword. He is an ancient warrior from another time.
He stops suddenly in his tracks, noticing the entrance to a stone dwelling which appears to blend into the landscape. As he resumes his trek toward the dwelling, a shrill, mournful sound cuts through the wind, and the warrior turns quickly to face us, revealing steel grey eyes that gaze out from under his bronze helmet.
Flash to present day, downtown in a large city: a middle aged man leaves his office late at night and gets into his car. As he starts the car, puts it in reverse and turns to look behind him, he is assailed by something unimaginably horrible from the back seat of his car. We barely get a glimpse of it.
The man’s grotesquely shriveled body, still frozen in it’s last position, is examined by the coroner and two detectives who have been assigned to the case: Craig Satchel, dark-haired with brooding, dark eyes and a sometimes flip, “everyman” personality; and his partner Terri Steno; dirty blonde hair, attractive, athletic, European features. She has a pensive quality and an ability to asses and adapt quickly to any environment. Neither they nor the pathologist Chad Hopkins are sure what has happened to the man.
Satchel and Steno have been partners for several years. Satchel has always harboured feelings for Steno beyond those of friendship, but she has always managed to keep her emotional distance. She is as much a mystery to Satchel as the case they’re on.
There is a fiery side to her however, and it flares up when she meets with a woman named Pallas, a regal, sophisticated and steely museum curator. Steno meets with Pallas twice, and both times it’s clear there is bad blood between the two women. Steno’s anger and frustration grows with each encounter, as she asks Pallas to take back what she’s done. Pallas arrogantly refuses.
Although frustrated by the lack of eyewitnesses and forensic evidence, Satchel and Steno share the load as they work the nuts and bolts of the case. What little Chad Hopkins has come up with only begs more questions. The condition of the body is unlike anything he’s ever seen. The victim has been petrified in mid-motion, freezing him in the midst of movement. In addition, the skin and organs have been completely transformed into another physical state. How can you look for a killer when you don’t even know who or what the killer is?
Then two more attacks occur. One on a woman with a man standing right next to her, and another with a baggage handler in a terminal at the airport. In the case of the woman, the man she was with becomes their only eye witness thus far. But because he was drunk at the time, the bits and pieces of the “monster” story he describes can’t possibly be taken seriously by the two detectives.
Satchel and Steno eventually adopt an ally in their investigation in the form of a busy-body tabloid newspaper reporter named Charlie Norris, a short squirrely man, unlit cigarette in his mouth and notepad in hand, who gives them a small clue: all of the victims share a common Greek ancestral name. It’s not much, but they add it to what has up to that point been a very short list.
In a flashback to the ancient past, the warrior stalks his prey, having now found the lair of the mythological creature he seeks. He discovers a beautiful woman sleeping peacefully in her chamber. He slowly creeps behind her, grabs her hair, pulls her head back and cuts off her head.
Back to the present. When the fourth victim’s body is dragged out from the bottom of a pool, a mark is found seared into the palm of his hand. It appears to be some kind of symbol, and Satchel takes note of it.
Finally Satchel gets a break in the case. He puts together the clues. A potential suspect caught in a few frames of previously overlooked surveillance footage from the baggage terminal, the symbol burned into the pool victim’s hand, and something he finds in Steno’s apartment. Unfortunately he discovers that the clues all lead to his own partner.
Hurt, confused and betrayed, Satchel confronts Steno at the museum, demanding an explanation from her. She can’t tell him what he wants to know, and in fact tries to warn him off. But Satchel is persistent. Before Steno can say anything more, they’re interrupted by Pallas. Steno’s attention immediately switches to Pallas and the two women again go at each other. Steno lashes out at Pallas for what she’s been doing, and threatens to finish it right then and there by taking the life of Pallas’s last remaining descendent. Pallas is in fact the Greek goddess Athena.