A car and a body float in the Delaware River after a three vehicle accident on Christmas Eve’s eve. The car belongs to the state, assigned to one Deborah DeStephano, who represents a district in Bucks County for the legislature and was seen shortly before nearby liberally imbibing. Sandy Velasco, a first responder, is ordered by the Fire Chief to go into the freezing Delaware River and pull the body out. Trying to do that, Sandy gets tangled up in some abandoned fish netting and after he has expelled the last of his breath and realizes he’s going to drown, lightning strikes burning through the netting, and he survives. He drags the body to the shore where it is evident that the body breathes but is  unconscious and has had its face torn off. The press crucifies Deborah for being DUI and the cause of the accident, then reverses itself and crowns her a heroine when an investigation concludes her car deliberately ran into a truck to keep it from hitting a church bus, filled with a children’s choir. Then Deborah’s corpse is found under a pile of snow near the accident scene. Not missing a beat, the press now declares someone else must have been driving her car, so it prints a picture of this faceless creature everyday asking people to help identify her, now lying comatose in the hospital. Eventually, she is identified as Regina Climbs, a homeless woman. As soon as the hospital learns Regina has no insurance and no one claims her, it removes life support, reporting that she died and the body cremated. Sandy finds out, and still confused about what saved him, before she dies, steals the body and miraculously, while he has her stashed at closed tennis club, she wakes up. Sandy decides to move her to Colorado, away from the press’s hype, as soon as he graduates in the spring. He dresses her in a niqab, to cover her badly scarred face. But while she is attending class with Sandy at Temple, she is unmasked and recognized by the students from the press’s photographs. To escape, she levitates out of the class. Fifty students film every second of it. The films post and a viral frenzy of internet activity erupts with a call for her capture. She runs away from the class right into some drug gang members who seek to make their acquaintance, only carnally. The police show up just after Sandy is badly slashed trying to protect her. The two get away, but the police charge Regina with murder when they find three people dead. Now to the religious seekers and celebrity mad press, add the police in the hunt for Regina Climbs.