At the start of the movie, a bunch of teens have gathered up to participate in a gaming tournament,
where the winner takes 10 Grand. The only objective of the game is to kill the other
players and get as many points as you can. After the game begins, two players start slaughtering
all the other players one by one, hence racking up a lot of points. One of them is an aspiring newbie
girl while the other one is a pro, who has won several accolades in the world of gaming. As the
crowd cheers on, the veteran uses his experience and takes the lead, but the newbie girl still has
an ace up her sleeve. She whips out a bottle of energy drink called the ‘Impulse 9’ and drinks
it in one go, which not only gives her energy, but also slows down the time by 100 times. With
this power, she kills all the players on sight, including the veteran guy. The girl eventually
wins the tournament, and begins celebrating with her boyfriend. But little did she know that her
excitement is about to be cut off in the most brutal way possible. The energy drink’s bottle
falls to the ground and shatters, causing the girl to snap back to reality. And when she does,
she finds herself as an adult with three children. To make matters worse,
she is living in a dilapidated house with no electricity and modern equipment. Outside,
the world has turned into a barren wasteland, and even the oxygen has become poisonous to breathe.
Following this, we rewind to a few days before the tournament took place with the introduction
of the girl; Val Hernandez. She is a brash up-and-coming FPS gamer whose only dream in life
is to go professional and make a living out of it. The year is 2017 and Val lives with her divorced
father Carlos. One day, he sets up Val for a job interview at a diner, and she reluctantly
leaves the house in formals. Outside, her boyfriend Evan comes to pick her up in his car.
After they leave, Val quickly changes her dress in the back. It turns out that she is ditching
her interview and going to a tournament of a game called Field of Fire. Just like most of the FPS
battle royale games out there, Field of Fire is a multiplayer game, where the main objective is to
be the last person standing. Val figures that if she wins first place, she could make a ton
of money and build herself a gaming computer. However, Evan pops her bubble by revealing that
a seasoned professional gamer named Roy is going to make a surprise appearance in the tournament.
Soon, the two arrive at the arena for the competition and see Roy taking pictures with
his fans. Before the first match commences, Evan reminds his girlfriend that she should not get
carried away and just focus on qualifying for the finals. However, Val has her sights set on
beating the arrogant Roy. After a while, all the players get seated on their computers and the game
starts. Val takes an early lead but Roy catches up to her without breaking a sweat. He even interacts
with the crowd in the middle of the game, such is his confidence. Taking advantage of this,
Val racks some points, and is on the verge of winning but instead of finishing the game,
she decides to go for a glory kill. The plan quickly backfires, and Roy eliminates
her in the blink of an eye. Despite this, Val qualifies for the finals happening the next day.
As the couple leaves the arena, Roy comes out and mocks Val before proceeding to
take selfies with his fans. And while Evan is away to get his car, a man named Kojima comes
up to Val and reveals that he knows the secret to winning. Val is perplexed by the strange comment,
but before she can say anything, Kojima hands her his business card and leaves.
When Val reaches home, she tries her best to not make
any noise but is caught red handed by her father. Left with no choice,
she tells him the truth about where she was during the day which infuriates Carlos even
more. He then orders her to go to the diner the next day and beg for a job interview.
However, Val asserts that the tournament final also takes place the next day, which is more
important for her future. And just like any other parent, Carlos tries to make her understand that
online gaming has no future, but the stubborn Val ignores him and storms off to her room.
Shortly after, she watches a podcast about the game earlier in the day and gets angry
that Roy took the first position. Just then, she notices Kojima’s business card and remembers him
talking about the secret to winning. Hence, fueled with vengeance and the desire to win,
she decides to visit the given address. Soon, she reaches ‘The Golden Saucer ', which turns
out to be a gaming cafe. Inside, a couple of people are playing video games on their
computers and consoles. Soon, Kojima approaches her and instructs her to sit
down and play a game. Val is still confused as to why Kojima had given her the business
card but nonetheless she gives the game a shot. She cranks up the game to the highest
difficulty and has trouble completing the level. Seeing this, Kojima hands her an
energy drink called Impulse 9. However he tells her that it is not an ordinary energy drink.
Curious, Val takes a small sip of the drink. And all of a sudden,
everything that she perceives starts to move in slow motion. As a result,
the game, which was impossible to play a while ago, has now become extremely easy for her.
Suddenly at the blink of an eye, Val wakes up and finds herself sitting across the table from
Kojima. When she inquires as to what happened, he explains that Impulse 9 stretches time for
whoever drinks it and that it has been an hour since Val had sipped the drink. He also reveals
that the amount of time stretched depends on the quantity of intake of the energy drink.
Following this, Kojima demands 500 dollars for one bottle which shocks Val. She starts
thinking that using the drink to compete in tournaments might be cheating. But just then,
Kojima gets a call from Roy and it's revealed that he also uses Impulse 9
to win games. This is why he has been labeled ‘unbeatable’ by other fellow gamers and pundits.
After learning of this, Val eventually decides to buy the bottle of Impulse 9.
The next day, at the arena, Val takes out the bottle of Impulse 9 and puts it by her keyboard.
Just before the game starts, she takes a small sip of the energy drink. Then, using the ultra
slow motion, she dominates the leaderboard for a while. Seeing this, Roy also drinks some Impulse
9 and starts climbing the ranks, ultimately reaching the top. This makes Val desperate,
so she chugs the entire bottle of the energy drink regardless of the outcome. As a result, time for
Val moves at an extremely slower pace, and she uses that to her full advantage. Eventually, she
kills Roy's avatar and wins the whole tournament. The crowd goes wild and everyone cheers for her as
well as Evan. As the couple kisses, the energy bottle falls to the ground and shatters. All
of a sudden, Val snaps back to reality and finds herself sitting on a chair in a dilapidated house.
She is holding a baby and shortly after, Evan comes into the room wearing torn and filthy
clothes. He puts the baby to sleep and tells Val to get ready. Val is super confused and starts
to hyperventilate after seeing her fully grown adult body and a wedding ring on her hand. She
runs downstairs for some respite, but to her horror, two other children call her mommy.
Suddenly, Val throws up in shock and runs outside the house. She finds the
neighborhood in total disarray as people live in tents with public bathrooms out in the open.
Here, It's finally revealed that Val has traveled to the year 2029 having skipped
over 10 years of her life in an instant. Furthermore, the town where they live is
enclosed by large walls which separates it from the wasteland that surrounds it. In the wasteland,
dangerous creatures the Death Lizards reside, that are notorious for attacking
humans. Because of this, the residents of the town guard the gate regularly in shifts.
Moreover, it turns out that the people who had drunk a large quantity of Impulse 9 in
the past are only waking up now and are called pulsers. This resulted in people
snapping back to reality many years into the future with no memories whatsoever,
causing havoc and chaos all over the world. However, there is no accurate way of knowing
if one is a pulser until and unless they snap back to the current time. Furthermore, since the
apocalypse was caused by the pulsers, most people despise them and rarely allow them to stay inside
the safety of the walls. It turns out the town’s sheriff and Deputy are Val and a man named Dan.
To avoid ending up like the pulser, Val hides the fact that she too had consumed Impulse 9.
Later at home, Val tries to work out what is happening. She then recalls her father,
Carlos and attempts to recall her last meeting with him. However, when she turns her head,
Val notices an Urn with her father’s ashes on the mantle. This devastates her and she
starts crying profusely. Shortly after, Deputy Dan calls Val down for ‘latrine
duty’. She initially declines but Dan reminds her that she is a sanitation commissioner and
has to do the work. As a result, she is forced to clean the dirty latrines for several hours.
Many days pass and Val starts getting accustomed to the ways
of the apocalyptic neighborhood. One day, she does every single task including guard duty,
scavenging and latrine duty. She picks up the kids from school where her daughter; Sophia,
gives her a drawing of her, saying that she is her hero. However, Val is extremely exhausted and she
doesn't appreciate the little girl’s efforts. Once she reaches the house, she finds Evan
pedaling a bicycle to power up a game console as electricity is not available. To Val's surprise,
the game is actually her favorite game; Field of Fire. Val is overly excited by this and agrees to
play one round before putting the kids to sleep. After Evan heads out to a social gathering,
Val and the kids start to game into the night. Hours pass by and suddenly, Evan rushes inside.
It's clear that he is terrified and informs Val that she has missed her guard duty shift.
As a result, Dan, who was thumping on the gate to be let in, was killed by the death lizards.
Wasting no time, the two rush to the scene where Dan's traumatized wife is furious with
Val. Filled with guilt, Val tries to go home but Evan says that she still has to finish
her guard shift. Reluctantly, she obliges. After her shift ends, Val returns home with
agonizing pain. She expresses her feelings towards Evan, who comforts and reassures her
before going to bed. Thinking she has no place in the new world, Val decides to leave everything
behind and to travel the wastelands. As a result, she writes Evan a letter,
admitting that she is actually a pulser. The next morning, Val exits her neighborhood with
the intention of never coming back while Evan reads the letter and is in complete disbelief.
In the next scene, Val continues to walk the barren land and soon comes across an abandoned
building. It turns out that the dilapidated building is actually Kojima's cafe; The Golden
Saucer. Val hesitantly enters the gaming cafe and looks around for a bit. To her surprise,
Kojima pops out of the counter, however she feels as if something
is off. She realizes that Kojima hasn't aged a day but he doesn't explain how.
As the two chat, Kojima finds out that Val had just snapped back a week ago and
he admits that a lot of lives were ruined because of the Impulse 9 drink. However,
he has a plan to rid her of all the sufferings she has been facing as of late. Kojima brings
out a large bottle of Impulse 9 and tells her to drink it, and if she does, she will never
snap back into this world. This is because she will travel hundreds of years in the future,
and by that time, she will already be dead. Kojima also suggests she play her favorite
game while going through with it. Val likes the idea and decides to sit down to play Field of
Fire. But when she leans forward to grab the Impulse 9 bottle, she finds the drawing that
her daughter made for her and becomes emotional. Val then takes a trip down the memory lane and
remembers all the good moments she had with her children and Evan. As a result, she abolishes her
plan to consume the energy drink and instead heads back to the community to reunite with her family.
At the gate, an angry Evan is on guard duty and he refuses to let his wife in as she
betrayed everyone's trust. Val apologizes for everything and promises to start over and make
things right. All of a sudden, the two of them hear gunshots from afar and realize that it is
the death lizards approaching their community. It's then revealed that the death lizards are
a group of normal people who are cannibals and hunt on others in the wasteland. So,
Evan lets Val in and the alarms go off, sending everyone into a state of panic.
One woman tells Val that everyone is going to the ravine as no one is ready enough to fend
off the attackers. Hearing this, an idea strikes her mind. Since everyone in the
community feels betrayed by her, she plans to gain their trust. Hence, she tells her husband
that she will be staying back and holding off the intruders for as long as she can.
Evan is sad to leave without her, but when Val tells him to go for their children, he obliges.
Shortly after, Val whips out the large Impulse 9 bottle from earlier and gets ready for battle. The
death lizards also make their way through the gate, ready to wreak havoc. It's then revealed
that the leader of the death lizards is none other than Roy himself. The two immediately
recognize each other and Roy reveals that he snapped back into reality a few years back,
and now, he has become a barbaric leader, who can kill anyone he wants. But despite his threats,
Val is not unphased. It turns out that she has already downed the energy drink before
they arrived, which becomes evident when she tosses the empty bottle towards Roy.
Suddenly, Val goes into slow motion and opens fire on one of the gas canisters,
sending the attackers flying. A brutal shootout ensues and Val manages to take
out almost all of them. Unfortunately, she gets shot in the stomach and shoulder before falling
to the ground. All of a sudden, Roy comes out and he fires a shot at Val but misses.
Taking advantage of the opportunity, she shoots back and successfully kills Roy.
Following this, she fires off a flare with her last breath, signaling to Evan that the community
has been saved. The movie ends as Evan notices the bright red flare while Val slowly dies.