Steve Ambrose

16-year-old Henry Coles is an outsider in her new town of Reston, New York. With a major chip on her shoulder and no friends, she remains withdrawn and isolated, but everything changes when a traumatic encounter with a classmate triggers something deep within Henry— unleashing a power she cannot control.

Alfred Carlton Gilbert invented the Erector Set and is trying to get it onto the toy shelves of the country. A.C. is startled to be summoned to the White House, where top officials ask him to convert the toy factory into a weapons manufacturing company for the duration of the war. "No" is really not an option, for fear of being labeled unpatriotic so the switch is made. Later, government officials ask A.C. to be their spokesman for a campaign to avoid "toy giving" for the coming holidays and buy war bonds instead. With a young son himself, who looks forward to Christmas like any other child, what will A.C. do this time?

Henry Adler, an outwardly normal banker, yearns to make it in show business and still answers to his overbearing father. When Henry is hired to act in a television police drama, he realizes his big break has arrived and decides to do whatever it takes to get into the role — even if that means donning his police costume in public during off hours. It isn't long, however, before Henry begins to take the law into his own hands as his violent side chillingly emerges.