In the 1980s, the world faced a new threat — AIDS. It has been called the plague of the 21st century. At the end of 1988, an AIDS epidemic broke out in a far-away Soviet province — the small town of Elista — and affected more than seventy children. The investigation starts in the children's hospital where the disease outbreak occurs. The first victims of the disease and the people investigating what caused the epidemic face obstacles, prejudice, and hatred in a country that denies the very possibility of a catastrophe that has already happened.