The Bourne Legacy (film) - Plot

Plot

Aaron Cross is a member of Operation Outcome, a U.S. Defense Department black ops program which is a replacement for Operation Blackbriar and which employs pills referred to as chems that enhance the physical and mental abilities of field operatives. Cross is assigned to Alaska for a training exercise, where he must survive certain activities and traverse rugged terrain in order to arrive at a remote cabin. The cabin is operated by an exiled Outcome operative, Number Three, who informs Cross that he broke the mission record by two days.

Meanwhile, a British reporter who was writing on Treadstone and Blackbriar, the programs preceding Outcome, is assassinated. Blackbriar and Treadstone are publicly exposed, leading the FBI and the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence to investigate CIA Director Ezra Kramer, Deputy Director Pamela Landy, Blackbriar supervisor Noah Vosen, and Treadstone clinical researcher Dr Albert Hirsch. Kramer requests help from Eric Byer, a retired US Air Force colonel responsible for overseeing the CIA's clandestine operations. Byer discovers a potentially damaging video on the internet in which the lead researchers for Treadstone and Outcome appear together at professional functions in public. To prevent the Treadstone investigation from finding out about Outcome, Byer decides to shut Outcome down and kill its agents. He sees the sacrifice as acceptable because the government has separately initiated next-generation beta programs, including the supersoldier program LARX.

Byer deploys a UAV (drone) to eliminate Number Three and Cross. Cross hears the drone's approach and leaves moments before a missile destroys the cabin with Number Three inside. When the drone returns, he tapes a thermal blanket and metal bowl to his abdomen, masking the signal from a tracking device beacon implanted in his abdomen. He shoots the drone down with his sniper rifle. Cross removes the tracker and force feeds it to a wolf from a pack hunting him. When a second drone kills the wolf and destroys the transmitter, Byer assumes Cross is dead. Byer engineers the death of other Outcome agents with poisoned yellow chems. Hirsch dies of an apparent heart attack before he can testify before the U.S. Senate. An indoctrinated Dr Donald Foite kills all but one of his top-level colleagues. When security guards break into the lab, Foite turns his gun on himself, leaving geneticist Dr Marta Shearing as the sole survivor.

When a crack team of CIA assassins attack Shearing at her isolated house, they are eliminated by Cross. He sees her as his last link to the chems so he can retain his enhanced capabilities and alleviate chem withdrawal. Shearing reveals that, without his knowledge, Cross has been genetically modified by a tailored virus to retain the physical benefits without needing to take the green chems. He still requires regular doses of blue chems to maintain his intelligence, but he is running out. Cross confides that he is Private First Class Kenneth J. Kitsom (reportedly killed by a roadside bomb in the Iraq War) and that his recruiter had to lie about his substandard IQ to satisfy the US Army's minimum requirements. Without his enhanced intelligence, they stand no chance of survival. Cross and Shearing travel to the Philippines, where the chems are manufactured, to try to infect him with another virus so he will not need the blue chems. Too late, Byer ascertains their intention.

In Manila, Cross and Shearing bluff their way into the factory producing the pills. Shearing injects Cross with live virus stems. Byer alerts the factory's security staff, but Cross and Shearing escape, Cross removing an expensive gold watch from the wrist of the security chief he disables on the way out, presumably for its potential bartering value later on. Byer orders LARX-03, a chemically-brainwashed supersoldier, to kill them. They shelter in a flophouse, where Cross recovers from the flu-like symptoms. During the night, he hallucinates about his initiation into Outcome.

The next day, police surround the doss-house while Shearing is buying medicine. She manages to warn Cross, who rescues her from the officers. He steals a motorcycle, and they are pursued by both the police and LARX-03. After a lengthy chase through the streets and marketplaces, they lose the police. Both Cross and LARX-03 are shot. LARX-03 locates his quarry again, but is killed when Shearing causes his motorcycle to crash into a pillar. Shearing persuades a Filipino boatman to help them escape by sea by giving him the expensive gold watch. Cross and Shearing are last seen at the back of the boat considering their options.