A line of text at the screen’s bottom-left reads “four days later”.

Jordan is sat on the floor of a gymnasium-sized room, its walls, floor and hangar-reminiscent ceiling all formed of a grey iron. He’s wearing a zip-up orange jumpsuit and looking towards a torso-height recession in the wall, next to a metal door labelled “A”. There, a window can be seen. Behind it, Doctor Ramsay sits at a large control panel, a microphone levelled by his chin. He’s bobbing his knee anxiously.

We switch to Ramsay’s POV as he looks to his right, away from Jordan, into a separate window.

Through this one he sees Zain, sitting limp in a similarly-designed room, his back to the wall and his head bobbing lazily as he looks down, avoiding the glare of the room’s ceiling lamps. He’s been stripped of his armor, a similar orange jumpsuit to Jordan’s taking its place.

The positioning of the rooms makes it obvious that they are adjacent to one another.

Ramsay looks behind him as the control-room’s entrance door slides open, moved by an electrical mechanism. Through this opening, Agent Samuel enters. He removes his helmet as Ramsay speaks, revealing the face of the plain, middle-aged and balding man underneath. Notably, a part of his bottom lip is swollen, this strange scar running down in a line to the base of his chin.

DR. RAMSAY: Have we got the all-clear?

AGENT SAMUEL: ‘Everything but the rad exposure.

DR. RAMSAY: All right. Didn’t expect that one to go through, anyway.

Ramsay, after putting a finger to his lips as he faced the agent in a “hush” gesture, and looking over a sheaf of papers, taps a button at the microphone’s base.

Ramsay speaks into the microphone, his voice echoing through both Jordan and Zain’s spaces. While Jordan’s eyelids raise a bit as the sound hits him, Zain’s catatonic stupor remains undisturbed.

DR. RAMSAY: First of all, Mister Shearer, I, on behalf of all the site’s researchers, would like to thank you for how cooperative you’ve been with regards to our questioning and testing. I’d like the both of you to know, as well, that we are conducting this testing in your best interests. We’d like to learn more about these– spirits– that plague you, and how best to remove them– excise them, rather– from your bodies. Once we can accomplish that, you’ll be sent home, and you’ll never have to hear from us again.

JORDAN: (angry, shouting) Oh, that is such bullshit!

Jordan gets up, trodding forcefully towards the glass aperture, and stopping suddenly as through the glass Ramsay can be seen to raise his finger over a small blue switch.

Speaking through his hesitation, Jordan’s angry tone survives:

JORDAN: Your guys showed me just where we are! My cell is a rusty death-trap and the food here is shit! It’s like fucking Alcatraz, you don’t treat people this bad, or bring them out this far, if you plan on ever returning them!

DR. RAMSAY: Mister Shearer, you’re being unreasonable! I’ll have you know that we’ve already returned your friend, mister Warren, back to his home!

JORDAN: That’s probably just ‘cause he never got pricked with that fucking arrow! Hell, even then, you’re probably still watching him and blackmailing him to keep his mouth shut and shit!

Doctor Ramsay is silent for a moment. He can be seen to lay a hand over his mouth, hanging his head in frustration for a moment before returning to the microphone.

DR. RAMSAY: We’ll begin testing now.

Jordan rolls his eyes, sighing.

DR. RAMSAY: Mister Shearer, if you could summon the spirit and give us touch-confirmation?

Scorched ‘El manifests, stepping out of Jordan’s side as if it had been inside him. Jordan puts a hand out towards it, and it does the same, their fingers meeting.

From Doctor Ramsay’s point of view, the tips of Jordan’s fingers are flattening as if they had just pressed against the air, Scorched ‘El being invisible to him.

DR. RAMSAY: Good. Maintain that, please.

Removing his hand from the microphone, Ramsay looks down to a screen-pad on his lap. Following this, he picks up a tape-recorder, flipping the “record” switch.

DR. RAMSAY: (into the tape-recorder) I think now we can verify for sure just how an “activated” spirit can be identified. The subject’s radioactive field heightens somewhat in activity upon the entity’s “summoning”, though it still isn’t anywhere near harmful. There is still, however, little we can make out with regards to the entity’s form, save for its general size and location. Ultraviolet, Infrared, X-ray… none of them seem capable of framing even this thing’s outline sufficiently. Proceeding to anomaly radiation cross-exposure.

Ramsay pulls a heavy-looking lever by the control panel’s supporting leg, a sharp clicking noise sounding as it moves.

In response, the heavy iron separating Zain and Jordan’s spaces begins to lift into the ceiling, releasing a pronounced groaning noise as it goes. Jordan seems surprised to see Zain.

DR. RAMSAY: (through microphone) Make no aggressive movement towards Mister Naqvi. He still hasn’t recovered from some critical head trauma, so we’re going to finish up with testing for today after this one last bit.

Stepping closer to Zain, crossing the threshold between the two spaces that the wall had once marked, Jordan bends down somewhat to see Zain’s face better. As he does this, Scorched ‘El de-manifests.

JORDAN: The hell did you do to him…?

DR. RAMSAY: Go and take a seat next to Mister Naqvi, on his right.

Jordan does so, moving more cautiously the closer he gets to Zain.

A small while passes where Ramsay can be seen to fiddle with his screen-pad, write some in a notebook, and speak into his tape-recorder.

As this is happening, Jordan attempts to get Zain’s attention.

JORDAN: (whispering) Zain.

Jordan, getting no response from Zain, jabs a finger into his ribs.

JORDAN: (whispering sharply) Zain!

Jordan sees Zain’s face as his head bobs randomly, noticing the disparity between his irises.

JORDAN: (whispering) Fuck, you’re so out of it. 

The next time his voice comes in over the microphone, Ramsay sounds satisfied and practically upbeat.

DR. RAMSAY: Okay, Mister Shearer! As I said, that’ll be all for today. If you could step in front of gate A for me, we’ll begin extraction. Remember, maintain a forty-five-foot distance from the opening.

Jordan winces as he gets up, anger obvious in his face. He turns to face Zain

JORDAN: They’re gonna fucking tranquilizer-dart me now, Zain. ‘Third time they’ve done this to me.

Jordan bends down closer to Zain, jabbing a finger into his face and clenching his fist. He begins to yell.

JORDAN: This is all your fucking fault, you cunt! You and your stupid shit! You fucking had to pull me into your garbage, and now I’m stuck here same as you! 

Jordan’s voice goes hoarse as he yells, fury reddening and contorting his face, and his eyes blurry with forming tears.

DR. RAMSAY: (through microphone) If you’re quite done, Mister Shearer?

As Jordan makes his way, slowly and unsteadily, back towards his half of the room, he is wiping his eyes and catching his breath. 

As he clears away the markers of his wrath, the shame hidden underneath shows itself. 

His bottom lip is clenched tightly, the chin beneath having flexed into the shape of a plum’s seed. His eyes are downcast, now seemingly very tired.

From behind Jordan, an unsteady creak of a voice speaks in little more than a whisper, reaching his ears thanks only to the room’s relative silence.

ZAIN: …Sorry…

Jordan turns to face Zain, his expression simultaneously surprised and pained. Zain’s head has stopped bobbing, and is now instead hanging forward, his unfocused eyes hidden by his overgrown hair as they look to the floor.

Jordan gives an exasperated sigh, looking away for a moment with a hand to his forehead.

Looking back towards Zain, with his arm dropping back to his side, Jordan speaks whilst maintaining his pained expression.

JORDAN: It’s– fuck, it’s fine, I– it– ugh. It doesn’t matter.

Jordan turns, continuing to the door.

Zain shows no sign of response.

Jordan lowers his head, a stern determination replacing all other expression on his face.

As the separating wall groans, lowering back down and obscuring Zain from Jordan’s periphery, the “A” door begins to slide open. In the shadows behind it, Jordan can make out the glint of  a rifle’s barrel. He looks it head-on, spite in his eyes.

JORDAN: (muttering) …’Cause I’m getting us both out of here if it kills me.

A lapse in time is implied, and we get a shot from Jordan’s POV as he blinks back to consciousness in his cell. Sitting up from his bed, Jordan rubs the spot of his neck wherein he had certainly just been tranq’d. 

Jordan takes a long, hard look at the cell’s door. By the time he’s taken his eyes off it, he’s already half-stripped himself of his jumpsuit, freeing his upper body. Dropping to a plank-position on the cell’s grated floor, Jordan begins doing close-chested push-ups whilst holding its grills.

A brief shot of Zain shows him, whilst leaned against its frame, scratching weakly at his cell’s door. An audible grinding is produced, as he’s generated a clawed gauntlet over the acting hand.

Cutting back to Jordan, we see a montage of his continued workout; he goes through sit-ups, burpees, tricep dips and at one point even uses his bed’s frame as a weight for squats. Through the sweat, reddened hands and labored breathing, Jordan’s eyes never lose their solemn focus.

A cut to Angosin shows him standing at the front of the church’s pews. His frame is now nearly unnaturally lanky, his face sallow and his eyes still tired. 

He is looking up at a detailed, carved depiction of the crucified Jesus Christ.

ANGOSIN: (whispering) Holy father, I thank you for how you’ve blessed me. With this, and your hand guiding me invisible as before, I will make this world righteous in its direction and pure in its devotion.

There is a slow fade to the outside of the still-pristine church as the camera pans away from it; at the building’s top left window, slid open, one can see the priest resting himself on its sill. He is massaging his temples with a hand and failing to restrain a dry coughing.

We flip back to Jordan, still in his cell. The room is darkened, and he’s in bed. He sleeps on top of the blanket, having abandoned the fetal position to lay straight on his back. We get a slow zoom towards his face.

ECHOING VOICE: You really believe you have a chance. Admirable.

Jordan is back in the blackened space, whipping around in an attempt to locate the voice’s source.

Standing at the center of a jagged, white imperfection in the space’s blackness, as if having torn a hole in it, is a figure so alien that it nearly defies description.

The pale creature’s torso sports an irregular, tubed spine down its front. Its lower body folds backwards suddenly into a thick tail, the tip of which supports the rest of the form though it seems too small to do so. Where the thing’s arms should be, its shoulders being formed of pearl-reminiscent spheres, float multiple barbs, always pointing outwards. Behind the creature, seemingly connected to it in no way is a glowing white sphere, larger than those attached to it. Its head sports irregularly cupped ears that hang low, as if upside-down. Its eyes are bulbous, black and reflective, though Jordan cannot see himself in them.

Jordan attempts to move his mouth, his expression betraying his confusion better than the words that fail to exit.

ECHOING ALIEN: I’ve always admired that about you; you humans will label illogical thought whatever you must to satisfy yourselves. So many different words for denial, yet you glorify each one.

The thing seems to gesticulate with its floating barbs, expanding and retracting them as it speaks.

ECHOING ALIEN: Any one of my own people, for example, would have pushed their croak-bones in by now, and the only reason I did not after being “contained” is because I had been prepared. Fitted with a perfect mechanism for escape, designed after this “foundation’s” very own “Absolute Exclusion Harness”.

Jordan, making no further effort to speak, looks at the creature quizzically whilst moving slowly away.

ECHOING ALIEN: I mean not at all to discourage you, of course; I simply entered your mind-space to warn you of your friend’s disposition, as I feel it may lead to a rather unfulfilling end to your doomed mission.

Jordan ceases his back-stepping, squinting somewhat at the thing.

ECHOING ALIEN: He is, and was even before the addling of his psyche, covetous and power-hungry. He finds himself exposed to a wide world of wonders, and wishes to dominate it for all it has to offer.

There is a brief cut to Zain, as he is now hammering, with the same lack of energy, on the door with his armored hand. Sliding slowly out from behind him is the faded form of his spirit, Colossus. Its horns are broken and warped, one of them bending into the cracked stag skull’s eye-hole.

The creature’s barbs lower to its sides. It now seems Jordan is attempting to bark something at it, though no sound escapes his mouth.

ECHOING ALIEN: He does not want ever to be restored from the warped soul-body relationship he’s taken on. He wishes to reclaim the damnable piece of metal that has tainted him, you, and this entire planet, and is otherwise directionless. Do not hope to bring him with you, for he will not want to leave.

The thing turns away from Jordan with a small jolt of its tail’s tip.

ECHOING ALIEN: That in mind, if you plan on acting please do it soon. I do not know when they will next take you for testing and I would like to leave your cell.

Jordan’s eyes widen, and the shot changes to the small kitchen of Scott’s house.

Scott is alone at the kitchen’s table, eating cereal. He looks out the screen door to his left as he mouths a spoonful of milk and cereal. Birds are chirping, green leaves rustling; it’s a sunny day.