he near future, the unmanned Pilgrim 7 space probe returns from Mars to Earth orbit

with soil samples potentially containing evidence of extraterrestrial life. The

probe is captured and its samples retrieved by the International Space Station and
its six-member crew. Exobiologist Hugh Derry, who is paralyzed from the waist down,
revives a dormant cell from the sample, which quickly grows into a multi-celled
organism that American school children name "Calvin". Hugh realizes that Calvin's
cells can change their specialisation, acting as muscle, sensor, and neuron cells
all at once.

An accident in the lab causes Calvin to become dormant; Hugh attempts to revive
Calvin with electric shocks, but Calvin immediately becomes hostile and attacks
Hugh, crushing his hand. While Hugh lies unconscious from Calvin's attack, Calvin
uses Hugh's electric shock tool to escape its enclosure; now free in the
laboratory, Calvin devours a lab rat by absorbing it, growing in size. Engineer
Rory Adams enters the lab to rescue Hugh; he is locked in by fellow crew member and
physician David Jordan, however, to keep Calvin contained. Calvin latches onto
Rory's leg; after Rory unsuccessfully attacks Calvin with a portable rocket
thruster, Calvin enters his mouth, devouring his organs from the inside and killing
him. Emerging from Rory's mouth even larger, Calvin escapes through a fire-control
vent.

Finding their communication with Earth cut off due to overheating of the
communication systems, ISS commander Ekaterina Golovkina performs a space walk to
find and fix the problem. She discovers that Calvin has breached the ISS's cooling
system; soon after, Calvin attacks her, rupturing her spacesuit's water coolant
system in the process and causing the water in the system to fill her suit. She
blindly makes her way back to the airlock; however, she and the crew realize that
if she re-enters, Calvin will also be able to re-enter the ISS. Hence, she refuses
to open the hatch and stops David from helping her do so; this keeps Calvin out of
the station for the time being but also causes her to drown and die in her
spacesuit.lvin then attempts to re-enter the station through its maneuvering
thrusters. The crew try to fire the thrusters to blast Calvin away from the
spacecraft, but their attempts fail, using up too much fuel and causing the ISS to
enter a decaying orbit where it will burn up in Earth's atmosphere. Pilot Sho
Murakami informs the crew that they need to use the station's remaining fuel to get
back into a safe orbit, although this allows Calvin to re-enter the station. The
crew plan to make Calvin dormant by sealing themselves into one module and venting
the atmosphere from the rest of the station.

After the crew finalize preparations to do so, Hugh enters cardiac arrest. The crew
then discover that Calvin has been feeding off of Hugh's paralyzed leg. Calvin
attacks the remainder of the crew; Sho seals himself in a sleeping pod. As Calvin
attempts to break its glass, David and the quarantine officer Miranda North use
Hugh's corpse as bait to lure Calvin away from Sho and trap it in another module to
deprive it of oxygen. Having received a distress call prior to the damage to the
ISS's communication system, Earth sends a Soyuz spacecraft to the station as a
fail-safe plan to push the station into deep space. Believing the Soyuz to be on a
rescue mission for the ISS crew, Sho leaves his pod and moves to board it, forcing
open its hatch; Calvin then attacks him and the Soyuz crew, causing the craft's
docking mechanism to fail and resulting in the capsule crashing into the ISS,
killing Sho and the Soyuz crew and causing the ISS to once again enter a decaying
orbit.