Dr Rick Tower is a mild-mannered English professor easing into middle-age at a medium-sized New England college. A genial blur, he thinks. Even his vices are unremarkable. But it wasn't always like this. Not until they changed his name, altered his looks and told him: 'pretend you were never different'. Decades earlier, after a bad day at high school, he was committed to a secret government facility with three other kids, each special in their own way. Tested, tutored and trained, this quartet were then told to save the world. It was the best thing that ever happened to them. Until it became the worst. Now, 20 years after the tragedy that forced him into academic non-entity, a mysterious disappearance means Tower must reunite with his former comrades. Each returns with their own agenda. And while great power might come with great responsibility, there's little of that on display from any of them.