14-year-old African-American Eli (Myles Truitt) lives in Detroit with his adoptive father Hal (Dennis Quaid), a compassionate yet strict construction site supervisor and widower who senses Eli falling into delinquency. While exploring an abandoned building site looking for materials to scrap for extra money, Eli happens upon the aftermath of an otherworldly shoot-out. In the debris, he finds an unusual-looking metallic box and takes it home. He doesn’t know what it is, but holding it seems to activate it, and Eli decides to guard it preciously.