A dog trained to be a thief is the only member of a gang of bank robbers who knows where a quarter of a million dollars is hidden.

When a spoiled English girl living in 19th century India loses both parents in a cholera epidemic, she is sent back to England to live in a country mansion. The lord is a strange old man-- frail and deformed, immensely kind but so melancholy. She wishes to discover what has caused him so much sorrow and to bring joy back to the household. It all must have something to do with the screams and wails which echo through the house at night and no one wants to talk about.

Daryl is a normal 10-year-old boy in many ways. However, unbeknown to his foster parents and friends, Daryl is actually a government-created robot with superhuman reflexes and mental abilities. Even his name has a hidden meaning -- it's actually an acronym for Data Analyzing Robot Youth Life-form. When the organization that created him deems the "super soldier" experiment a failure and schedules Daryl to be disassembled, it is up to a few rogue scientists to help him escape.