In 2048, the uncontrollable evolution of science and technology has caused crime rates to rise an astounding 400%. To combat this, the overwhelmed police force has implemented a new policy: every human police officer is paired up with a lifelike combat-model android.
John Kennex (Karl Urban), a troubled detective, has a reason to hate these new robot partners. Almost two years previously, Kennex and his squad were raiding the hideout of a violent gang known as the Insyndicate, but ended up being ambushed and outgunned. Kennex tried to save his badly injured partner, but the accompanying android officer abandoned them both because their chances of survival were low. An explosion then took out Kennex's leg and killed his partner.
After waking up from a 17-month coma, Kennex has to deal with a cybernetic prosthetic leg and huge gaps in his memory, which he tries to recover through visits to a Recollectionist in the city slums. Besides trying to remember as much as he can about the raid and the Insyndicate, he is also coming to terms with being abandoned by his girlfriend Anna.
Kennex is then recalled to the force by Captain Sandra Maldonado (Lili Taylor), and partnered with a standard-issue MX-43 android, which he promptly throws from a moving vehicle because it was a nuisance to him. He is assigned a replacement android, an older DRN model originally destined for the scrap heap. Created to be as close to human as possible, the DRN androids have trouble dealing with some emotional responses, which was the reason they were replaced by the logic-based MX units. Kennex's unit, known as Dorian (Michael Ealy), immediately proves himself unique, with a clear dislike of being referred to as a "synthetic".