In 1954, at the height of the Cold War, the Soviet military promised four political prisoners their freedom—if they could endure an experiment designed to keep them awake for fourteen days using a powerful stimulant gas.

As the days stretched on, their minds unraveled, descending into madness, self-mutilation, and murder.

None survived.

Now, in 2018, Dr. Roy Wallis, a renowned psychology professor at UC Berkeley, is determined to recreate the experiment. With two student assistants, he monitors a group of young Australian test subjects in a soon-to-be-demolished campus building. They take turns watching over them in eight-hour shifts, believing they are in control.

But what starts as an academic study quickly spirals into a waking nightmare—one that no one, except perhaps Dr. Wallis himself, could have foreseen.