When an advanced cyberworm infiltrates the power grid and causes rolling blackouts along the west coast, Lillian sends Gabriel and Riley to Los Angeles to locate Cortez, the hacker responsible for creating the worm, and to make him shut it down. Cortez is actually the hacker alter-ego of a fifteen year-old kid named Troy, whom Gabriel saves from a mysterious Ukrainian hit man just as they arrive at Troy’s downtown loft. After Troy denies involvement in the blackouts, the Cybercom team learns that a Ukrainian terrorist group stole Troy’s worm and unleashed it on the power grid, using the worm to target the San Jacomo nuclear reactor. If the worm isn’t stopped in time, there will be a full scale nuclear meltdown on American soil. The Ukrainians, led by Torbin Salvi, offer to exchange the only computer that can stop the virus for the release of Torbin’s brother, Dominik, whose extradition to Russian prison is imminent. Cybercom reluctantly agrees to the exchange, but things go sideways and a firefight ensues, ultimately destroying the computer they need to stop the worm. Faced with the prospect of a nuclear meltdown in a matter of hours, Gabriel and Riley come up with an idea to give the worm a new digital target within the power grid, hoping that the worm will take the bait. Gabriel uses the chip to generate a phantom reactor over four times the size of San Jacomo, and the worm falls for the trap, devouring the fake code and then self-destructing.
