Attempting to avert his unknown attackers, Veil uses Dr. Bellamy's driver's license and credit cards as he sets out on a desperate search for answers to who has stripped away his entire life. Before long, he's presumed to be the missing Bellamy, tracked down and taken to the enemy's headquarters for Western Operations. There, "Dr. Bellamy" is instructed to make one of their subjects, Ellen Combs, comply with the same "conditioning" procedure administered to Veil.

In his search for why someone wants the negative of "Hidden Agenda", Veil enlarges it and detects details that lead him to a remote Georgian town to seek more answers. There, he happens upon a traveling sideshow starring Derek, a blind 10-year-old billed as "The Boy Psychic", who reveals ominous news about Veil's pursuers.

Classified as the unknown enemy's first priority, the elusive Veil is apprehended and submitted into a chemically-induced hallucinatory state in which his attackers have complete control over his sense of time and space. Within their 'lab' setting, actors and elaborate sets are employed to convince Veil he's been in a loving relationship with a woman to whom he'll soon divulge the sought-after information.

After getting a job in a small-town photo shop, Veil is stunned to glimpse a picture of his wife Alyson as he processes a customer's film. He frantically pursues that customer to question where she shot the picture, but the chase lands him in New Phoenix, a haven for the disenfranchised and community of those who have, for one reason or another, lost their identity at the hands of the mysterious enemy.

While hiding out in a cheesy motel, Veil happens upon The Lenny Little Show, a public access television series in which the main character is un cannily depecting Veil's own frightening life. Struggling to understand, Veil watches as unknown forces pursue Lenny and attempt to erase his every trace. He sees the actors perform the exact same dialogue and reenact experiences he endured as recently as the previous day. Trying to grasp what's happening, Veil angrily pursues an explanation, which leads him to the strange offices of Max Webb Productions—and his tormentors.

Unsure if he's running towards something or away from it, an exhausted Veil happens upon a disabled, reclusive computer genius, Scott Hansen. The young "hacker" is able to access Veil's deleted files—the only trace of his existence—and through an intricate virtual reality session, takes Veil back to his wife Alyson and also helps him get information about his pursuers.

Searching for clues about Dr. Bellamy, Veil traces the beginnings of the mysterious man's research to a private school, The Sterling Academy. There, he gets a job as a groundskeeper and not only uncovers that the administration is programming the student body through elaborate subliminal persuasion, but exposes a murder and a conspiracy to cover it up.

As Veil's mysterious pursuers close in and are about to kill him, his life is saved by a peculiar stranger. He's thunderstruck when the man, a quirky drifter named Gus Shepard, seems to know all about his situation and, with or without Veil's cooperation, is intent on showing him the only way out of it.

In need of anything that connects him to his former life, Veil risks returning to the house and town he grew up in and, while savoring this small but significant part of his past, he unexpectedly meets the man who betrayed him twenty years earlier—his father.