Without a word, Wenji makes her way toward the helicopter. There is a scowl on her face as she looks at the vehicle.

WENJI: (muttering) Loud.

As Wenji starts to climb into the chopper’s back seat, Angosin can be seen to not have moved, looking again into the sky.

The janitor has now taken his hands off the wheel, his hands held nervously near the machete held at his throat.

JANITOR: Please, I– don’t make me drive again, I barely managed to fly this thing here.

Angosin responds, still not moving his focus from the sky.

ANGOSIN: Don’t lie, you were demoted straight from a unit specializing in flight operations. Although…

The machete is pushed further up into the janitor’s neck, not drawing blood but pressing hard into the skin.

ANGOSIN: …No, you shouldn’t end up doing any more flying today.

The next part, Angosin mutters under his breath.

ANGOSIN: They’re just late, is all.

A slight smile can be seen on Angosin’s face.

Wenji, inside the chopper, can be seen to whip around, staring through its rear windows. Her eyes have assumed their avian aspect.

Three helicopters can be seen in the distance, an intensifying chopping-of-air sound accompanying their approach.

Their make and model are identical to that of the helicopter Wenji is currently in.

The janitor’s face floods with relief as, leaning his head out the side-window and looking back, he also sees the approaching aircraft.

JANITOR: Oh, thank god.

Meanwhile, inside of the first of the nearing helicopters, a man in a flight-suit and a respirator helmet that covers his face is at the stick. He can be heard to speak into a comm device, his voice lowered by a voice-changer:

PILOT: We’ve got eyes on the unregistered departure, it’s grounded. One humanoid outside the T-3, infrared imaging shows two inside. One adult-sized, two smaller

A voice, assumedly from the other end of the comm, replies in a staticky but clinical tone.

SITE DIRECTOR SCHRUTE: Good; don’t let them off the ground. Apprehend all of them.

PILOT: Yessir.

The comm shuts off, and the pilot mumbles to himself as he bring the helicopter closer still to the grounded trio:

PILOT: It’s always gotta be kids.

He shakes his head as he says this, as if in disapproval.

Wenji turns away from the rear window, hanging her head. Her knuckles whiten as she grips the sides of her seat. A low shot shows us her gritted teeth and desperate expression.

We can hear her unsteady breathing as outside, in great flocks, birds can be seen to settle on the branches of trees, high and low. A cacophony of cawing and avian screeching fills the air as the birds seem to share her stress.

The sound of one of the chopper’s doors opening can be heard, followed by those of crunching leaves.

All of a sudden, she hears a voice from right next to her.

ANGOSIN: Don’t make a scene. This is all part of the plan.

Her eyes inching to the right, Wenji sees Angosin’s disembodied mouth, having formed in a mist right by her ear and hidden under her hair.

Releasing a small shriek, Wenji flings herself away from the flesh-wisp. As she does so, it disappears.

Wenji turns to look out of the chopper’s still-open door, staring daggers at Angosin.

WENJI: You planned this?

Angosin doesn’t answer her, moving to just outside the chopper’s cockpit. It is empty, the door on the Janitor’s side having been flung open.

ANGOSIN: Sure glad he didn’t hear you saying that. And, yes, I did; they’re going to take us in, Wenji, right to where we want to be. Right where you’ll find your father.

Wenji stares Angosin in the eyes for a moment. She gulps, the avian features disappearing from her eyes as she steps out of the helicopter. She turns to face the landing helicopters with Angosin.

The birds can be seen to disperse.

In the distance, the janitor can be seen waving one of the choppers down, with it in response landing a few meters in front of him.

Wenji and Angosin are both centered in the searchlights of the two remaining helicopters, having to shield their eyes from the blinding white, their hair being blown every which-way.

Only one of the two lands, the other remaining airborne above them.

Only now, looking around, does Wenji notice the many thin laser-sights positioned over her and Angosin’s bodies.

We change focus to Jordan in his cell. He’s stretching and warming-up every muscle in his body, and is otherwise completely silent.

In the middle of his stretches, he lifts his bed’s mattress onto the floor and slides to just in front of the door, seemingly to do bench dips on it.

Finishing, he takes a deep breath, exhaling hard.

Moving swiftly, he at the door, jumping onto the mattress and tracing his hands up on either side of it.

We see that Damian, up in the monitoring room, has taken notice.

With Jordan stepping back, Scorched ‘El appears in his stead, levelling its cannons just wider than the door at the concrete wall adjacent to either side of it.

Meanwhile, just outside the door, two armed guards have their back to the wall:

ARMED GUARD ONE: Any plans for the weekend?

ARMED GUARD TWO: Like I’d tell you.

Alternating back to Jordan in the cell, Scorched ‘El has begun fring concentrated jets of Scorcho into the wall. The concrete quickly decomposes in showers of sparks, as if being hit with a powerful thermal lance. The ricocheting sauce either falls down and out of the hole as liquid or vaporizes into the air. Jordan covers his mouth and nose with his jump-suit’s sleeve, muffling his laughter as he sees these droplets hit the mattress rather than the floor-grates.

We see Scorched ‘El’s streams finish annihilating the concrete, continuing through to the guards on the other side, their backs to the wall.

GUARD ONE: Do you hear that…?

Before the second guard can respond, he’s hit in the back of his armored head by one of the streams, his helmet and the padding underneath both quickly being reduced to a viscous mess that sticks to his now-exposed skin. The beam continues through as the guard stumbles forward screaming.

The other beam hits the first guard in the back of his shoulder, quickly eating through the plating thereon and all but disconnecting that shoulder from the body.

The guards both fall to the ground kicking and screaming, though the one shot in the head stops after a moment.

The first guard is on the ground, clutching at his lost appendage.

He looks over to his dropped machine-gun as the metal door just above it starts to steam at its edges.

From behind both of the far-off turning points of the hall, small hand-mirrors can be seen to stick out, as if in response to the noise and continued screaming.

The door falls off its hinges onto the first guard’s gun, evidently having been melted at its seals and hinges by Scorched ‘El’s sauce. Jordan steps out onto it.

Looking around, Jordan is obviously disturbed by his handiwork. As he averts his eyes from the melted-in helmet and head of the second guard, wincing, they fall onto the still-living man on the floor before him.

He’s wheezing, pushing himself further into the wall, away from Jordan.

GUARD ONE: (voice-cracking) Fuck.

All at once, with two for either end of the hallway, guards bound into view.

Immediately, Jordan’s body is dancing with red, thin-beamed laser sights.

One of the guards bellows at Jordan, with no voice-changer present to alter the wrath in her voice:

CORNER GUARD: You , back away, now! Into your cell!

Jordan, looking around and seeing his surrounded predicament, seems on the surface dumbfounded.

However, locking eyes with the guard that called him out, he raises an arm, slowly, to have his palm facing straight at the wounded guard on the ground.

Scorched ‘El doesn’t manifest in the same position as Jordan, however, with neither of its cannons facing down. It manifests, invisible to all but Jordan, with its cannons directed at the guards at both ends of the hallway. 

Shifting perspective back to the forest, we see Ookomisan retreating from the doorstep into the cabin.

Shutting the door behind her, one can see the exhaustion in her eyes as she looks up into the ceiling.

As she lifts a small, translucent brown bottle from atop the fireplace, she mutters to herself:

OOKOMISAN: Oh, Wenji… Biskawaagan… I cannot even remember how long you’ve been gone.

Opening the bottle above her head, trace amounts of some nigh-invisible powder can be seen to dance about her, settling all over her form.

As if in instant response to this: from cracks, corners and crannies all over the single-roomed building, insects of every type can be seen to reveal themselves.

Buzzing up, torrent-like, flies, dragonflies, mosquitoes and all the like wrap her arms.

Down near the floor, ants, cockroaches and beetles crawl up onto her legs and shawl.

Ookomisan can be seen to close her eyes as the insects crawl further up onto her.

OOKOMISAN: I saw.. Wenji…

A dragonfly pushes its way through the rest of the winged pests, nearing her ear.

OOKOMISAN: She is being taken, just like her father…

A multiple fruit-flies near her nostrils.

OOKOMISAN: I have to warn her.

A larger, black fly pushes past them, crawling into her nasal cavity.

OOKOMISAN: With this ailing body, this forgetful mind… I am all but useless.

The dragonfly presses its head into her ear.

OOKOMISAN: So take my mind into you, little ones…

A tick nears her other ear.

OOKOMISAN: Keep it in your own many minds, so much more resilient than mine. Carry it, with your able bodies…

It enters.

OOKOMISAN: Onto the birds, who will take you to…

Ookomisan opens her eyes.

OOKOMISAN: My granddaughter.

We see Wenji and Angosin, their arms bound behind their backs, through a window of one of the four helicopters now speeding back towards the snow-tipped mountains. Wenji is staring balefully forward, at the guard levelling a  rifle at her head.

Far behind the helicopters, faltering in the newly-falling rain, are a great many ravens.