Cam Hilliard is, in addition to being the President's 16-year-old son, a chess prodigy. A year into President Hilliard's second term Cam inexplicably stops playing the game he loved and becomes withdrawn. The First Lady demands that Dr. Lee Blackwood be brought on. Lee's opinion is dismissed, until Cam's spleen ruptures and it becomes obvious that something is horribly wrong. Lee comes to believe Cam is not the first case of an inborn error of metabolism. But when two young people Lee has found, each with exceptional gifts, are murdered, Cam's condition suddenly takes on a terrifyingly new dimension.