After killing four persons in his home with a shotgun, Dee Travis claims that he had accidentally ingested an experimental biotoxin that the company Blackthorn where he worked was researching. Travis is sent visibly ill to the Harwood Maximum Security Prison and the Security Officer Sweeny sends the inmate to the infirmary. Meanwhile the CDC Agent Samantha Beckett comes to the prison to interview Travis and is received by Warden Mahler. While they are having a conversation, they are informed that Travis has been transferred to the solitary confinement and his infected blood has caused an outbreak among the prisoners and guards. Samantha calls the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the responsible advises the warden that the prison is in quarantine.