Having been unjustly locked down in a brutal rendition camp for two years by NSA Director Amos, XIII is sprung in a daring escape by mysterious allies. These allies turn out to be Ex-President Sheridan and psychotic freelance killer Irina Svetlanova. When Sheridan promises that if XIII retrieves the contents of a safe deposit box only he can access, Sheridan will give him information about his past life. XIII takes the deal. Opening the box, XIII finds a mysterious watch that contains a computer chip. Suddenly, killers from all camps converge on XIII to acquire the watch and it’s all he can do to keep himself and Sam - his friend from the photo shop - alive. In the end, XIII takes the ultimate risk and makes an incursion into the White House itself in an attempt to force President Carrington to play by XIII’s rules.

XIII and Sam follow a clue from Sheridan to Green Falls, a small town where XIII may have grown up. As XIII begins to ask questions about himself and his father, who is a local reporter, XIII stirs up old secrets and modern-day violence. In the end, XIII learns his boyhood name, but also is driven to solve the murder of the father he never knew and a corporate scheme to hide the deaths of hundreds of workers. XIII also learns that he was conscripted into a CIA training program when he was away at college. The more answers he gets, the more mysterious his past seems to be.

Chasing another lead from Sheridan, XIII gets himself thrown into a brutal Venezuelan prison in search of a prisoner who might have worked with XIII when he was a CIA operative. The problem is getting to this prisoner – Sanchez - a powerful personality who inspired the prisoners to fight for their rights. He’s been declared insane and locked away in a high security area. XIII must fight off attacks from both prisoners and guards as he attempts to sneak into the secure medical ward and get the information he needs. When corrupt CIA chief, Giordino gets involved and forces XIII to do a dangerous side mission for him in the prison, it seems that even if XIII gets the information he needs, he might wind up spending the rest of his life behind the bars of this brutal institution.

XIII follows the piece of information he learned from Sanchez in the Venezuelan prison. It leads him to Ireland in search of Seamus O’Neal, an ex-IRA operative who was inducted into the CIA at the same time XIII was. In Seamus’ home town, XIII begins to ask questions about Seamus and opens up old hostilities… and a possible connection between Seamus and a new breed of IRA killers. XIII must fight to find out what Seamus was involved in… and the secrets of what it has to do with XIII’s own life.

XIII follows the trail of his identity to a paramilitary training camp in the Pacific Northwest named Bitterroot where he supposedly trained. As XIII tries to discover the nature of the secret mission he was being trained for, he runs afoul of the camp’s owner, Rech. It’s all XIII can do to stay alive though the vicious training regime…and the ever-present danger of being discovered and executed as a spy. In the end, XIII finds some of the information he was looking for, but at a deadly cost.

Having learned in Bitterroot that he was trained for a corporate intrusion mission in Costa Verde, XIII and Jones head off to investigate. As they dig deeper into XIII’s possible involvement there, they make stunning discoveries. Not only might XIII have been involved in an explosion that killed hundreds of workers at a plant, but he was also involved with a revolutionary movement… and its beautiful and charismatic leader. In the end, what XIII finds out, might not just get him killed, it might change the course of the country’s history.