The Fifth Essence is the key ingredient to the Philosopher's Stone, the legendary alchemical formula for transmuting base metals to gold and creating the elixir of life. But mix in murder and a hunger for immortality, and the Fifth Essence turns into a dark matter.That's what private detective Nicholas Pierce (Crystal Skull) realizes after he's hired to search for a mysterious woman, named Isabel, who's a person of interest in the disappearance of her boyfriend, Jack Garity, a chemist for a suntan lotion company. Pierce soon discovers that the missing man had been obsessed with a former chemistry professor, Lydia Mullen, who three decades ago wrote a text on alchemy from the point of view of a practictioner. Like Garity, she also vanished without a trace. As he digs deeper, Pierce realizes that it was no coincidence that two police detectives investigating the Garity case had been found dead. Now he too is in danger as he moves closer and closer to discovering the identity of Isabel and her relationship to a secret government program.