With the temporal facility on the verge of destruction, Cole and Jones find themselves in the middle of a coup. After a unhappy encounter ends in an unexpected tragedy, Cole is sent back to 1957 in a last-ditch effort to save humanity while the rest embark on a caravan across the apocalypse to find Titan - the stronghold of the Witness.
Utilizing a dangerous and untested method of time travel, James Cole journeys from 2043 to the present day on a mission to locate and eradicate the source of a deadly plague that will all but annihilate the human race.
Cole is a convicted criminal in a post-apocalyptic future where the Earth's population is forced to live underground after a deadly virus. In a bid to earn a pardon, Cole uses the imperfect science of time travel to help collect information on the virus released by the Army of the Twelve Monkeys.