Change scenes to Angosin, standing next to the priest in the church’s foyer. His back is to the wall, where the priest is holding a measuring tape next to him, measuring his height.

ANGOSIN: What’s this all for, father?

The priest gives Angosin an optimistic smile. This, Angosin does not return. 

PRIEST: It’s as I thought, last time I saw you. You’ve undergone some incredible growth in your time here– about a full foot, you’ve grown.

Angosin indeed looks taller. His eyes seem more tired than ever before, however, prodigious bags having developed underneath them.

Angosin begins making his way up the church’s spiral staircase, towards the bunk-room. As he reaches the stairs’ top, however, he notices a small figure crouched in the corner of said room.

Barely recognizing him through the solemn look on his face, Angosin sees the boy he’d overheard talking to the priest naught but a few days ago. The boy looks up at him.

SADDENED BOY: Angie, I miss ‘Shel. Father won’t tell me where she is.

Angosin looks at him for a long moment, his expression still blank and tired.

Change scene to the POV of a small figure in a white-sheeted bed. The POV’s focus shifts to the left, seeing a small arm wrapped in a sort of thick white sash. Out of the sash, a few wires string towards the white wall towards their left, disappearing into a plug attached to it. The coughing of a young child, muffled as if by a mask, can be heard originating from the POV. Up and to the POV’s left, two figures obscured in white plastic and face-masks speak in poorly-hushed voices.

DOCTOR: This shouldn’t be happening. At this age, her body certainly shouldn’t be able to manifest a cytokine storm.

Angosin’s voice comes over the scene, clear and serious in its projection.

ANGOSIN: She’s in a hospital, probably really far from here.

The boy looks up at him, bewildered.

SADDENED BOY: What…? How do you know?

Angosin says nothing, continuing into the room and towards his bunk.

SADDENED BOY: Will she be okay? 

At this, Angosin stops.

Change scene back to the hospital, where we hear the coughs from the POV growing quickly into violent hacking. Pathetic, pained whimpers can be heard between the coughs as the child struggles to reclaim their breath.

Switching back to Angosin and the boy, Angosin turns slightly towards the younger child in the corner. He shakes his head in a “no” gesture.

At this, the boy’s face begins to scrunch up as he pulls himself further into the room’s corner. As he speaks, his voice heightens in pitch and cracks, suggesting an on-coming fit of tears.

SADDENED BOY: Buh– but we were gunna get married…

Change scene to the log cabin. The trees above shake as frigid winds hit them, and rain barrages past them to assail the cabin’s roof. We see its interior, where Ookomisan is placing a shard of log into the space’s furnace. She sits but a few feet away from it, next to Wenji. Unlike Ookomisan, who takes a thin book from a pile of them to her right and begins to examine its cover and back, Wenji is staring straight into the furnace’s open flame.

Ookomisan bends towards Wenji, outstretching the book to her. Wenji turns to look at its cover, which reads “The Effects of Low Temperature on Biological Systems”. A library tag is visible on it. 

From this new angle, Ookomisan sees Wenji’s eyes flit from their yellowed, avian appearance to those of a regular, blue-eyed girl as they consume the cover’s content.

OOKOMISAN: Is this what you are having your winged friends do now? Visit libraries for you, and bring you books? It will draw attention.

Wenji looks up towards Ookomisan, somewhat frustrated.

WENJI: Father used to do it for me, and I am not betraying his wishes. I will go to the new world only when I am older and stronger, like he wanted. For now, it will be only the birds. They will go to the building, up in the mountains.

Ookomisan’s face takes on a hint of worry.

OOKOMISAN: What mountains? What are you doing with the birds?

WENJI: They will not attack yet.

OOKOMISAN: Wenji, they will die up there! They will freeze!

WENJI: Only when they are few. I have sent them all; they will soon be many. They will carry each-other, and dig holes, and rub together in them. They will have children, and then they will be enough to scratch those suited people to ribbons.

Ookomisan, leaning closer to Wenji as she speaks, sees her eyes assume their avian aspect once again.

OOKOMISAN: Wenji, this is madness! You are hurting them! This is not what your father would have wanted! You wanted to form an army in those mountains, and kill them? How fast do you plan to grow up?

Wenji stands, looking down at Ookomisan with a grimace.

WENJI: As fast as possible, so that I may join them. Perhaps even by the time their children are hatched! Father said that good things come to those who wait, and the birds will wait up there. For me!

Change scene back to the mountain-mounted facility’s interior. Scott is fast asleep within a cell much like Zain and Jordan’s. The room remains darkened to near-pitch until its iron gate of a door swings open with a shrill creak. Scott grunts groggily, having little time to resist as two guards enter, hefting him up by the shoulders. 

As he’s being tugged through the hallway, Scott’s drowsiness is replaced with adrenaline. Through a small, circular window to his right, Scott sees a richly starlit night sky.

SCOTT: Hey, guys, could you let me the hell go? I can walk on my own.

The guards turn to look at one another. Their responses have Scott somewhat taken aback, their voices both lowered considerably by what are likely voice-changers.

GUARD 1: What do you think? My arms are damn tired.

GUARD 2: Yeah, and this whole terrorizing kids deal’s got me feeling guilty as hell. Hey–

The second guard softens his grip on Scott’s shoulder, leaning in to look him in the face. The softness in his voice can be heard even through his voice-changer.

GUARD 2: –you’re going home tonight, okay? You did well to tell us all we wanted to know. We’ve just got one stop, and you’ll be waking up in your bed, like nothing ever happened.

Both the guards cease their holding on to Scott, and the world soon becomes a blur as Scott sprints immediately away from them. His full-run form is flawless; putting his weight forward, and making full leg and ankle propulsions with each swing of his legs, the heavily-geared guards have not a hope of catching him.

GUARD 1: God damn it.

The first guard shifts down to a knee position, having just de-shouldered his rifle by the time the second stops him.

GUARD 2: Wait, wait! 

Scott passes many of what seem to be office rooms, including the room he was interviewed in, and ahead of him he sees what seems to be a cafeteria. He turns right, away from it into a dimly lit hallway, and out of the guards’ view.

GUARD 2: I knew it. He’s heading right towards them.

A slow zoom onto a wedge at the entrance to this hallway highlights its label. In black, cracked paint, this label reads “Amnestics Bay”.

Scott looks behind him as he bolts down the white-walled hallway, seeing no pursuers. His footfalls are muffled by the way’s felt carpet. Ahead of him, Scott sees the washed-out-underground-bunker equivalent of a waiting room. He skids to a stop just before the hallway’s end, almost tumbling over as his momentum overwhelms him.

Scott checks again. No sign of the guards giving chase. Maybe he’d lost them, his exhausted mind formulates.

Before he has even the chance to peek into the waiting room, his back to the hallway’s walls, he hears a congregation of voices, not one of them whispering.

VOICE-CHANGER LOWERED VOICE: And you’re sure we have to use selectives? Couldn’t we just erase the past few days, put up a cover-story about his friends getting kidnapped or something?

HIGH-PITCHED MALE VOICE: Of course not! No matter what his file says or what he’s told us, we can’t be fully sure that this is the first time the anomalies have manifested before him! That, and we’ve already balanced the serum according to his neural scans.

At this point, Scott looks behind him. The two guards from earlier have just rounded the corner to his hallway, and were advancing towards him steadily.

In a moment of desperation, Scott exits the hallway towards the voices.

Stepping into the waiting room, Scott sees the only egress offered to be a small room adjacent to it, just through its left wall. To the opening’s left, a panel laden with switches, a lever and a keypad is built into the brick.

In the white-tiled room, made to look very much like a shower by the circular, sprinkler-like grate in its roof, is another guard, coupled with a balding man in a white lab coat.

The man in the lab coat is bent over double over a tile-space in the floor. The space’s respective tile has been taken out, revealing a pit wherein a great deal of tubing and wires run through.

The tile is quickly replaced as the guard notices Scott, barking something incomprehensible at him and levelling a rifle towards his chest.

Taking a step back towards the hallway, Scott bumps into the pair of guards that had been making their way to him.

The researcher and guards are silent as Scott is restrained, and he himself makes no attempt at sound beyond those of his struggle.

The researcher clears his throat as the guard currently grappling Scott looks to him.

RESEARCHER ABERHEIM: Well, everything’s been put in order. When you’re ready.

As he speaks, Aberheim gestures towards the chamber.

Scott is tossed in, the heavy metal door being slammed shut before he can rush the entrance. Plastic hinges at the door’s edges make a vacuum-like sound, having obviously just air-tightened the room.

From the outside, a warning label can be seen centered on the door. It reads: “Warning! Aerosolized Amnestics: Keep door closed when in use.”

The researcher can be seen to flick a switch on the wall-mounted terminal after inputting some combination on its key-pad.

Within the cramped chamber, Scott finnicks as the shower-head begins to spew a red mist, which is descending slowly towards him.

Scott’s eyes go immediately to the tile that the researcher had replaced not a moment before.

Digging at the tile’s edges feverishly, Scott breaks his index finger’s nail before he is able to pry it up, revealing the mass of wires and tubing.

Scott looks up from the tubing towards the descending cloud, which has filled nearly the entire room. The space begins to smell of cinnamon and chlorine. Scott’s face betrays his recognition that he had run out of safe air.

Scott ducks his face into the tile’s opening, just barely managing to bring his hands and wrists in with him.

SCOTT: (aside) Need air– clean air– the pipe bringing this stuff in might be here, gotta smash it–

As Scott struggles with the little use of his hands available, he manages to push aside wires and small tubing to find a significantly larger, transparent pipe, which seems to be transporting a red mist.

Clawing at it feverishly, Scott manages to disconnect it from the concrete hole it had been feeding into, like a hose. The aerosol substance within immediately vacates it, spewing right into Scott’s face. The last shot we get of him is of his face being quickly obscured by the vapors as he cringes and reels in panic.

A time-lapse is implied, and when the door to the chamber swings open, the Guards approach to see the room free of the red mist. Scott is fully prone on the floor, his head and hand face-down in the tile-space.

At this point, I Lost Something in the Hills by Sibylle Baier begins to play.

GUARD: Jesus.

Another time-lapse is implied, and Scott’s unconscious form is the first thing we see. He’s laid out in the back seat of some sort of vehicle, its rumbling and engine-purr telling us that it’s running. Through the vehicle’s shaded window, we see crags, uneven stone and the odd pine-tree just beyond a flattened road-path. Above this, the night sky is visible.

In the car’s front-section, guards inhabit the driver’s and passenger’s seat.

DRIVER-GUARD: When do we have to be out of there by?

PASSENGER GUARD: Five-twenty A-M is when the choppers come in, six is when they actually start with the amnesting.

DRIVER-GUARD: Great.

We get an exterior shot of the black truck on the road-path, having just passed the base of the mountain the path winds down. The vehicle leaves the mountain behind it, driving out of focus.

The shot pans up towards the mountain’s peak: past it, the peaks of many more are visible, dwarfing this one in height. At the center of the shot, being barely visible, is the rectangular form of the facility. 

A brief shot of Zain is given, splayed out on his cell’s bed. The bed’s covers have been thrown to the floor. His head is in a thick, white cast.

Another brief shot is given of Jordan, curled up in a fetal position in his cell, underneath his bed’s covers.

A shot of just outside the facility shows us a ragged-looking seagull pecking at one of its windows.