1948
Under a shroud of secrecy rivaling that of The Manhattan Project, Army and Air Force scientists begin Project Backdoor. Using alien technology recovered from UFO crashes, they work to create an artificial wormhole, a portal capable of instantly transporting troops into the heart of the Soviet Union. The technology fails and many die. By the mid-1950's, the government abandons the project. Omega One, a shadow organization cloaked in secrecy, with tentacles of influence in every aspect of American life; the military, business, education and government, steals the project. They seek to control the wormholes for their own self-enriching purposes. With jack booted methods, Omega brutally enforces its paranoid secrecy. A hint of its existence to the public means death to the person who talks.
Under Omega, Project Backdoor succeeds, almost. Rather than opening a door between the United States and Russia, the project opens a door to another world. Once pierced, the boundary between the dimensions loses its cohesion. Wormholes randomly open between the two worlds.
Present Day
An avalanche strands an Amtrak train in the Northern Rockies. As three men, passengers on the train, struggle to wait out the storm and be rescued, they are drawn into the forgotten remains of Project Backdoor. Cleve Baxter, an Air Force medic, Will Gravets, a scientist and writer and Ty Lawrence, an ex-college football player, find themselves caught between our world and the other world on the other side of a wormhole.
