At 12 o'clock in the middle of the night, Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland), the head of the Los Angeles counter-terrorism team, received a call from his colleague Nina Myers (Sarah Clarke), asking him to return to the office quickly because intelligence showed that the first black presidential candidate, Senator David Palmer (Dennis Haysbert), was under assassination threats, and there might be a ghost in CTU. Therefore, Jack needs to track down the killer to protect the presidential candidate and find out the ghost in the next 24 hours. At the same time, Jack's daughter Kim (Elisha Cuthbert) sneaked out of the house to attend a party with her girlfriend Jenny, but did not want to be held hostage. In order to find her daughter, Terry (Elisha Cuthbert) and Jenny's father had to go find their daughter alone. However, it turned out that the kidnapping of her daughter was planned by terrorists, and Terry, the wife who was looking for her daughter, was also kidnapped by terrorists. In order to save the lives of his wife and daughter, Jack had to obey the orders of the leader, Gearns (Michael Massee). In the following time, Jack had to do everything he could to ensure the safety of his wife and daughter while also protecting the safety of presidential candidate Palmer...