In the near future, the air has become so polluted that everyone must wear masks outside and every house must have a filter. The Aethera company has a medicine called AIRemedy that lets you breathe without needing the mask for six hours, but it’s very expensive and only the elite have access to it. In a dark lab, Solomon is recording a video, explaining Aethera will eventually ration AIRemedy.
When that happens people will become desperate and that’s when Solomon wants to start a new trial. He knows that increasing the dosage of his compound may trigger a fatal immune response, but he thinks it’s necessary to save humanity. At that moment he receives an alert saying that the last green zone in the world has become polluted too, which means that in eighteen months 83% of the population will be at risk of lethal toxin exposure.
Solomon’s friend Spider notices their lab is being watched, so she comes up with an idea to protect their research. A new party liquid called “Blue” is the latest trend, so she advises Solomon to color his compound the same way. If the police catch them, they’ll think they’re dealers and the compound won’t be tested.
Meanwhile Ella works as a model for Aethera promoting their products. Her mother used to be a model too, but she self-deleted and Ella took over her legacy, so other models resent her for being a nepo-baby. Now Ella keeps her breathing medicine in her mother’s locket.
During a break at work, Ella receives a message from her boyfriend Tully canceling their date because he’s busy. After hearing other models talk behind her back, Ella texts her best friend Gina asking her to hang out. However Gina is with Tully because they’re having an affair.
Tully wants to tell Ella the truth but Gina reminds him today it’s the anniversary of the death of Ella’s mother, so they should wait. Tully drives to a shady neighborhood to pick up some party uppers while Gina waits in the car. Ella calls her to complain about Tully because he didn’t pick her up and now she has to take the train.
Gina invites her to a party, but Ella isn’t in the mood. After hanging up Ella listens to a hobo in the station say that the toxic air is a punishment from God for what humans did to the planet. Meanwhile Tully surprises the dealer with his visit.
Nobody is supposed to know where he lives but Tully used a tracking app. While waiting for the dealer to get his package ready, Tully watches an interview on TV. Head of Aethera Research Eric is taking questions from callers and at first they’re normal people, but soon a distorted voice calling itself Lazarus begins questioning the origins of AIRemedy and says the company won’t be able to meet global demand.
Eric gets uncomfortable and quickly ends the conversation. While the thugs are distracted, Tully sneaks around and finds the lab where Solomon and Spider are working on the compound, which is now blue. Tully watches Solomon take a tiny sample and instantly relax, so he assumes it’s a new party-upper.
After Spider puts the compound in the fridge, Tully carefully sneaks around again to steal it. Then he gets his package from the dealer and leaves as if nothing happened. The person watching Solomon takes notice of Tully and Gina.
After leaving the TV station, Eric gets a call from the company CEO, who is also his father. The board isn’t happy with the bad reputation the company is getting from the conspiracy theorists, so Eric needs to find a solution immediately if he doesn’t want to lose his job. When he returns to the lab, he tries a new medicine on a rat, but the little guy dies after just a few minutes.
Eric punches his tablet in anger before he’s visited by his assistant Angela, who explains they tracked Lazarus’ call to Luxembourg. Afterward Eric gets a call from his son Max, who is contacting him in secret because his parents are divorced. Max shares that he gave some money to a poor man on the streets and Eric scolds him for it, saying people are parasites.
The call is interrupted by Eric’s ex, who announces they’re moving to another city. Eric gets worried about his kid living with the dangers of the red zone. In the evening Ella goes home and keeps looking at a magazine cover of her mother with her baby self.
She knows the industry likes her only because she looks like her mom. At that moment she gets a call from her dad, who is stuck on another continent helping the poor and Ella resents him for it. When he says she shouldn’t be alone today, she hangs up on him.
However now she feels lonely, so she decides she’ll go to the party after all. At the party, Gina and Tully hide in the bathroom to try the compound he stole. Before they can take it they’re found by Ella, who freaks out when she realizes they’re together.
An argument ensues and Tully accidentally drops the compound before he and Gina leave. Alone and depressed, Ella takes the compound and drinks it all. Then she goes to dance with Bryan to make Tully jealous, but he doesn’t care.
Moments later Bryan is trying to get busy with a girl in the bathroom when suddenly Ella runs in because she feels really sick. The other girl leaves while Bryan gives Ella some water, only for her to puke on his shoes. She insults Bryan to make him leave, then she collapses on the floor.
Seconds later she gets a text from Gina asking if they can talk, but she ignores it and instead fills the tub with cold water to calm her body down because it feels like burning. In the living room, Tully finally realizes he’s lost the compound and while he looks for it, he’s found by Solomon and his thugs, who start chasing him through the house. They make it to the bathroom, so Ella hides underwater while the thugs punch Tully until he admits he lost the compound.
After the group leaves to search the house, Ella resurfaces and tells Tully that she took the compound. Tully runs to tell Solomon, but when the group comes back Ella is gone. They don’t believe Tully when he says she was hiding in the tub because nobody can hold their breath for that long.
Suddenly Tully takes out a gun and Spider tackles to the ground, causing him to accidentally fire the weapon. Tully collapses from the blood loss and Solomon wraps his leg wound with a belt while the others go searching the house again. Spider yells that the cops are coming so the partygoers run away.
After Solomon and his group leave, Tully wakes up and discovers Ella hiding on the ceiling. She lands perfectly on the ground and Tully notices weird spots on her arm, but she thinks it’s just a reaction to the compound. Since Solomon locked the door when he left, Ella angrily punches it, surprising herself with the resulting hole.
As she leaves the bathroom, she finds the thugs guarding the front door, so she goes back and breaks the bathroom skylight with her newfound strength. Ella and Tully take some AIRemedy before climbing out of the bathroom to reach the roof. The noise gets the attention of the thugs, so Ella jumps toward another building.
Tully tries doing the same but his injury makes him slip. Ella reaches out and easily catches him because now her hand is very sticky. This is seen by Gina on the street and she runs around the house to find them.
Then the duo tries to escape only for Tully to slip again and fall, and Ella jumps after him. By the time Gina arrives she finds Tully dead and thinks Ella pushed him. While Gina calls the police, Ella starts running from the thugs again.
She jumps over the fence and reaches the road, where she collapses right in front of Bryan’s car. He takes her away right before the police arrive. The mysterious person who has been following Solomon is watching all this and now knows about Ella.
At Bryan’s apartment, he tries to get handsy with Ella while she’s still unconscious. At that moment she wakes up and punches him to get him off her. Bryan says he’s been cut and Ella notices a claw on her elbow hiding under her skin.
While Bryan runs away in fear, Ella goes to the bathroom and notices she has more weird blotches on her body that won’t go away when she washes. The claw comes out again, so she uses scissors to cut it off. Afterward Ella rushes to the hospital and shows the weird colors on her face to get attention fast.
The nurse thinks she is sick and should be quarantined, so she calls security. Ella immediately starts running and hides inside a patient’s room, using the stickiness of her hands to climb the wall and hide on the ceiling. She asks the patient to stay silent and the girl doesn’t say anything when the guard runs by.
After he’s gone, Ella gives the sick girl all the AIRemedy she has. Meanwhile Eric receives information about the whole situation with Tully’s death and Ella because he was the one who sent a person to follow them. Bryan has told the police about Ella’s claw so now Eric is interested in her too.
Solomon and Spider make it to Bryan’s apartment and find the claw in the sink. Eventually Ella finds Gina, who runs away as soon as she sees her. Ella runs after her and tackles her to the ground, trying to explain she needs help.
Gina lets her into her apartment and Ella looks at herself in the mirror to discover her skin is getting worse, not to mention her nails are coming loose. Next she feels a great craving for meat, so she grabs a burger from Gina’s fridge before taking her phone. Since the thugs have Tully’s phone, Ella texts his number asking them what they want.
When the subject of the affair comes up, Gina and Ella start arguing again. Ella mentions that everything in her life was fake and she had thought Gina was her only real friend, but she was wrong. In return Gina mentions Ella can behave like a brat sometimes and hurts people with her attitude.
When the microwave beeps, Ella grabs its door with such fury that she rips it off. At that moment Solomon calls and Ella agrees to meet him later. Gina wants to call the police, but Ella stops her rather aggressively and she realizes her friend is scared of her.
In Luxembourg, Eric's men enter an abandoned room looking for Lazarus, but they only find the tablet they used to make the call. There’s a message for Eric, mocking him because he doesn’t have enough resources to keep making AIRemedy and he’s afraid of competition. After hearing it, Eric calls his father to ask for a few weeks to finish a new formula since he wants some time to spend with his son before he moves away.
However his dad only gives him three days. Back to Ella, she’s eating the meat raw while Gina tries tracking Tully’s phone. Before leaving for the meeting, Ella tells her friend that after this is over she never wants to see her again.
Moments later she meets with Solomon, who distracts her so Spider can surprise her from behind and kidnap her. Gina sees this from afar and with the help of the phone tracker, she follows them. Solomon and Spider take Ella to their home, which is seen by Eric’s man.
Inside, Ella is tied to a chair but she manages to grow out another claw that breaks the bindings. There's some meat on the counter, so she immediately eats it all without cooking it. When Solomon and Spider appear at the door, Ella grabs a knife and spits acid at them, burning Spider’s hand.
At that moment the police arrive and start pounding on the door, so Solomon gives Spider the last compound sample and tells her to run. Solomon then tries to convince Ella to trust him but they’re interrupted by the police bursting into the room to arrest Ella for assaulting Bryan and killing Tully. Some officers find the lab so they arrest Tully too, thinking he’s a leader.
Gina watches her best friend being taken away and does nothing because she doesn’t know who to trust anymore. Later in prison, Ella touches her neck and notices the blotches reaching her ear, which suddenly falls off to let a weirdly shaped ear grow out instead. Ella covers her head with her hood while Solomon explains his goal is to find an alternative to AIRemedy that can provide for every person regardless of social status.
The conversation is interrupted by the arrival of Eric, who reveals Solomon used to work for Aethera. He takes a close look at Ella’s changes and pays to release both her and Solomon from jail. He takes the duo away in his car and they’re seen by Spider, who follows them.
Moments later at Aethera’s research facility, Eric gives Ella a sedative so he can run some tests. Her DNA appears to be mutated, meaning she isn’t human anymore. Eric then goes to the basement, where one of his men is torturing Solomon.
After reading all the crimes Solomon could go to jail for, Eric asks him to work for the company again, but Solomon refuses because he wants the medicine to go to everyone regardless of class. Eric disagrees, pointing out it was humans who destroyed the environment in the first place so he should get to choose who survives. When Ella wakes up, her face is half mutated too.
Eric tells her that her transformation means she can breathe the polluted air and her body is producing an enzyme that could be used to make more AIRemedy. He starts manipulating her, saying that he tried to contact her father but they didn’t find him and that Solomon isn’t cooperating because he doesn’t want to share the credit. If she lets him run more tests to find the formula, he promises to make her normal again when they’re done.
Ella believes him so she signs the paper before she’s sedated again. The next time Ella wakes up, her new ears let her hear Eric talk to his dad even though he’s outside the room behind a very thick glass. She learns that Eric won’t run simple tests, he actually wants to extract the enzyme through a procedure that will most likely kill her.
Her father has also filed a missing person report but Eric is bribing the police. A furious Ella begins pounding on the glass so Eric releases gas into her room to put her to sleep again. Sometime later Spider arrives at the facility in a stolen company van, pretending she's bringing stock delivery.
Since the security guard is busy playing videogames, the guy at the gate lets her pass. Meanwhile two doctors go to Ella’s room to get her ready for the procedure, only to notice her bindings are broken. Suddenly Ella reveals she’s awake and starts hitting the doctors until they tell her where they’re keeping Solomon.
The security guard finally sees what’s happening and activates the alarm, so Ella drags a doctor to the door and uses his fingerprint to unlock it to escape. Soon she reaches the basement but she can hear a guard coming, so she hides on the ceiling again. When the man is close enough, Ella spits acid on his face before knocking him down.
The guard still tries to get his gun out, so Ella has to hit him again to knock him out. Then she goes looking for Solomon, who explains he wants the formula to be free for everyone. He calls Ella’s mutations “just side effects”, so she furiously pushes him against the wall as she wonders how this can be better than the masks.
In the meantime Eric goes to his private airport to pick up Max, who is already upset because his father is late. When they arrive at the facility, Eric hears that Ella escaped so he leaves Max with Angela before joining the search teams. Refusing to play babysitter, Angela leaves Max in Eric’s office, where he finds Ella’s locket.
The guards are making their way into the tunnel, so Solomon shows Ella the vents. She climbs in there with her sticky hands and brings Solomon up using her super strength, managing to escape before the guards can see him. At the same time Spider installs some bombs and sends the company a message warning them about an explosion happening in nine minutes.
Angela tells Eric they should evacuate, but he thinks the bomb isn’t real and the message is only trying to distract them. After sneaking through a tunnel, Solomon and Ella make it to the lab. Using a hologram, he explains that the main ingredient used in AIRemedy is extracted from a particular dragonfly only found in Africa.
They’re the only species unaffected by the bad air, and Ella is now becoming one. This dragonfly has gone extinct because of Aethera’s production and synthetic ingredients don’t work, that’s why Eric wants to harvest Ella. Solomon has been working with Lazarus to perfect the formula by mixing it with other animals’ DNA and they plan to distribute it worldwide.
At that moment one of the bombs goes off, so Ella and Solomon begin running again. When they hear someone coming, Solomon tackles the person to the ground only to discover it’s Spider. Suddenly gas starts filling up the basement, so the group rushes upstairs and hides in the bathroom.
In one of the stalls, Ella finds Max trying to hide from the bomb. He calls her a fairy, so she plays along and offers her hand. Max feels comforted and gives her the locket.
Afterward the group keeps running through the building until Eric appears to block their way with a gun. Solomon and Spider manage to avoid him, but Ella uses Max as a shield and pretends she’ll hurt him with her mutations if Eric doesn’t step back. Proving what kind of father he is, Eric opens fire anyway and Ella dodges the shot just in time.
She lets go of Max and the kid distracts his dad while Ella jumps down from floor to floor until she reunites with Solomon and Spider in the elevator. They rush to the garage and get in the van to escape as fast as possible. The company guards open fire but Eric reminds them they need Ella alive, so instead they shoot at the van’s wheels as it crosses the front gate.
The vehicle falls and lands on its roof, but when the guards get closer they discover only Spider is in it. Meanwhile Solomon and Ella run through the forest and Ella breaks the fence with her new claws to escape. All the guards go after them and only one man is left watching Spider, so she pretends to be sick to catch him by surprise and knock him out.
Now she can escape as well. Eventually Ella and Solomon reach the bridge and Solomon tells Ella to jump to escape. She doesn’t want to leave him behind, so Solomon shows him his mutated arm.
He only took a bit of the compound because he was a coward, so he isn’t sure he’ll survive anyway. Solomon gives Ella the last sample and asks her to find Lazarus to finish the medicine. Ella gives him her locket before jumping into the river, successfully getting away.
Soon the guards arrive to capture Solomon and Eric announces he’ll force him to make another mutant. Sometime later Gina finds an envelope at her door with the special decorative earpiece she used to share with Ella. That night Spider hacks into a TV channel to tell the whole world they must change to avoid dying.
Meanwhile Ella’s mutations have given her wings and she uses them to find Lazarus, who turns out to be Angela.