Blessed with a photographic memory, bored with classwork, medical student Benjamin Garrett spends every waking hour in the labs of UC San Diego's Molecular & Cellular Medicine Building. He's an enigma to students and faculty. He's also just twelve years old. A young waitress named Sara Tucker finds herself drawn to the pasty-faced prodigy. Under the guise of a journalism assignment, she investigates what makes him tick. She pieces together the story of his heartbreaking young life, eventually befriending him...and learning that his research is on the verge of a world-changing breakthrough. He's engineered a molecular tracer missile, a "super tumor suppressor gene." Now Sara's got a story too big to keep secret: Benjamin Garrett may have cured cancer. Neither is prepared for the storm that follows.