A researcher and a guard can be seen rolling a vending-machine sized metal container down a hallway. Even on a trolley, it looks heavy, with it’s hatch-piece looking to be like the door of a fridge.

GUARD: Who was this guy, again?

RESEARCHER: Well, persons files came up with nothing, so he probably lived off-grid. Blood tests say that he’s of some sort of native descent, though.

GUARD: Well, I got that much just looking at him. Guy was fuckin’ wearin’ his culture.

The guard chuckles as the researcher continues, ignoring him.

RESEARCHER: We can’t be sure whether he’d harnessed the same spirit-style anomaly as the two boys, but video capture tells us beyond a doubt that he could control land-based mammals.

GUARD: Uh, wait–

RESEARCHER: Yes, that includes, or– included– humans.

Up ahead of them, on the hallway’s right wall– the side opposite where small, circular windows can be seen to let in light– is Zain’s cell.

Meanwhile, Jordan’s hallway standoff continues, though all the guards at either end of said hall have gone silent. The only sound disturbing this silence is Jordan’s panting, matched by the wheezing of the guard by his feet and the sound of Scorched El’s sauce sizzling through the floor.

Jordan has Scorched ‘El out, facing one way, while he faces the other. The spirit’s cannons are still on the standing guards and Jordan’s bluff-hand is still directed at the wounded one.

Following an angry grumble that covers their wheeze, the grounded guard hammer-fists into the wall behind him with his good arm, yelling:

WOUNDED GUARD: Goddammit, I know what I signed up for! Do it!

Quick to respond, Jordan turns to the guard for a moment to bark at him before addressing the rest:

JORDAN: Shut up! Listen, either you guys drop your weapons and let me by, or–

Jordan can be seen to hesitate, growing more aware of the many laser-sights on him. His eyes dart to the destroyed head of the guard he’d already shot. Its form is now reminiscent of a melting anthill.

JORDAN: –Or you’re going to lose another guy, and it’ll be just as painful.

Switching focus to a guard in the back of the group Jordan himself is facing, we can see he stands out from the rest. This one is wearing a peculiar set of goggles. He can be seen to nudge a guard to his front-right, who, after nodding, begins to address Jordan in a loud but disarming voice, lowering his weapon.

FRONT GUARD: All right, all right, let’s all just calm down. We–

The front guard’s louder voice can be heard to fill the hallway, but becomes fuzzy to us as focus shifts to the goggled guard. Pulling out a walkie-talkie, he keeps his eyes on Jordan as he speaks into it. His voice is all but drowned out by the negotiator.

GOGGLES: All right, I want everyone to target his legs on my mark–

We switch to Goggles’ POV. His goggles allow him some variant of infrared vision, highlighting Scorched ‘El’s form, and revealing that neither of their cannons are directed at Jordan’s supposed hostage like his arm might indicate.

GOGGLES: –and be advised, the spirit’s not targeting Geralt– it’s targeting all of us. Thank god we could afford these goggles.

JORDAN: I’m not gonna fucking calm down, I want to fucking leave this place! Oh, and another thing, I want Zain Naqvi and Scott Warren set free as well–

GOGGLES: Mark.

Jordan’s words falter as every one of the laser-sights on him, from both sides, drop to around his calves.

JORDAN: –Wh–

A split second after this, Goggles yells out loud:

GOGGLES: FIRE!

In an instant, the hallway is lit up. Jordan’s lower legs are eaten away, going from swiss cheese to a scrambled mess as the wounded guard shields his head with his arms. In frenzied desperation, Scorched ‘El fires.

The two streams, still loosely directed at the firing guards, can be seen to melt any bullets that whip through them. At one end, a stream slams a guard right in their stomach-area, sending them backwards into their peers as steam billows form the point of impact. At another, the shot goes off-target completely as Scorched ‘El seems to jostle in reaction to Jordan’s shock. The stream impacts the roof.

Jordan falls over onto a side with a wet thump, screaming harder than he ever had in his life. The world around him is going blurry, and his ears are ringing. All the while, behind the ringing and snippets of muffled speech, he can hear a sound reminiscent of pounding rain.

GOGGLES: (muffled, drowned out) …ack! Get back!…’s still active!

The sound of rain is followed by a deafening, metallic groan from somewhere above.

Changing focus to Zain for a moment, his entire cell can be seen to shake violently as the sound of something very heavy falling echoes through the room’s metal walls.

Back with Jordan: his entire face is slick with sweat as he comes down from his adrenaline high, and he feels as if it is all he can do to stay conscious. There is a pronounced burning on his upper back that motivates him to get up. He has to use both his arms to support himself up, and as he places one in a puddle of something cool yet burning-hot, he cries out as best a scream-ruined throat can in pain. His unfocused vision finally focusing as he scrubs at his back and hand with the scraps of jumpsuit still on him, and what he sees is desolation.

The entire hallway has been wrecked, with the metal/concrete roof having caved in fully, exposing the the air duct and wiring running along above. A dust hangs in the air, and the rubble is infused with copious amounts of Scorcho Sauce. The excess sauce is creating a faucet effect, dripping from many places at once to the ground in regular intervals. In many places the floor has been eaten away, many still simmering basins of sauce being strewn about.

 Jordan has to fall forward in a huff, jostling himself around desperately as the burning substance eats away at his back. All the while, he’s hissing in pain, with this sound falling into chorus with the similar sound of the steadily degrading rock and metal. By the time he’s shaken and sloughed the substance off, the skin of his upper-left back has been eaten away entirely. Raising his before-wet hand to in front of his face, he sees the skin of its palm and digits has simmered away, as well. Jordan hangs his head for a moment, whimpering slightly between shaky breaths before raising it again to look around.

Changing scenes back to Zain in his cell, we see him getting up.

His armor has now formed fully around him, obscuring his face.

As if in response, the alien voice echoes throughout the room yet again.

ECHOING ALIEN: Your brain is addled; that must be why you can’t hear me.

Zain walks over to the room’s sliding door, with Colossus shifting into existence beside him.

ECHOING ALIEN: I suppose it’s for the best, anywho. You go and die, you and your misguided optimism.

Zain leans with a shoulder on the door, with Colossus phasing through and past him. It’s attempting to push the door down.

Changing scenes to Site-Director Schrute in a finely-furnished office, we can see him panicking as he is ruffling through a cabinet of papers. Braced between his shoulder and neck we can see a large black phone. He seems panicked.

SITE DIRECTOR SCHRUTE: Yes, goddamnit, Damian, I know he’s breaking out! Because I predicted it, you dolt, we didn’t have the facilities to contain him to begin with! When can we expect the grab-squad back by, we need more firepower h– what?

Back in the middle of the destroyed hallway, Jordan is indeed absent. Guards can be seen hiding behind either of the hallway’s turning points, where the destruction is more minor. Goggles’ crew can be seen huddled in one such spot.

GOGGLES: Watch the roof, he may have compromised it further than we’ve noticed.

One of the guards to his left pipes up:

GUARD: Do you see him? And god, what is that smell?

Goggles taps at his eyewear frustratedly.

GOGGLES: No. What kind of crap is he pulling? Even with the spirit deactivated, he should be detectable.

Nearer the curve, a guard is belly down on the ground, sliding a small, rectangular mirror attached to a handle forward. Through the reflection it gives of the hallway, he sees that it’s empty save for rubble, some sizzling, smoking maroon-orange liquid and a trail of blood.

The guard turns to face the group.

MIRROR GUARD: ‘Think he’s moved back into the cell.

Many of the other guards look at each other, then at Goggles. He’s staring straight down at the ground.

After a moment of silence between the squad, Goggles pushes through them towards the wrecked portion of the hall.

As he makes his way into it, heedless of the rubble and corrosive liquid, he brings his walke-talkie to his ear once more.

GOGGLES: Yeah, I see he’s gotten free.

As Goggles says this, he glances up at the ceiling.

GOGGLES: I’m guessing he broke the door down with that same rock trick? He’s wandering towards the hangar right now, I think. Notify the grab squad.

Shunting the talkie into his pocket, Goggles stops as he looks down at the wounded guard that Jordan had taken hostage earlier.

A fallen chunk of the ceiling has crushed his skull, a wayward shard of rebar warping his jaw into an unrecognizable mess.

Without a word, Goggles turns to the open door of the room.

From the other side of the hallway, a separate squad of guards can be seen poking their heads past the curve to see him and the blood trail.

SEPARATE SQUAD GUARD: Are we moving in?

Goggles turns to look at them, behind him, his own squad can be seen moving up into the ruined hallway.

GOGGLES: Not you. You’re moving up to the window level; the other one of these ghost kids has broken loose. Call Schrute, he’ll brief you.

With the separate squad departing from view, Goggles turns back to the cell.

The red trail can be seen to lead inside. The mattress has moved, now being in the center of the room.

Goggles gives the room a cursory glance before fixating on this mattress. The same blemishes from droplets of sauce are present, but now a corner of the mattress is deeply soaked with blood.

With a shove from his boot, Goggles moves the mattress aside.

Underneath is a hole in the grating that makes up the floor, the melted-through portions of metal bar still smoking slightly.

Goggles’s team moves in behind him as he stares into the abyss beyond the aperture.

One of Goggles’ companions moves up beside him.

GUARD: Okay– that fall had to have killed him, right?

GOGGLES: Not definitively. Down there’s the site’s sewers, this cell was designed for anomalies that generated excessive runoff, which means some body of water may’ve caught him. Also–

Goggles turns, pointing back at the trail of blood.

GOGGLES: His radioactive signature’s tied to his organic tissues, and yet that blood’s giving me nothing.

He turns back towards the hole, looking straight down.

GOGGLES: Yet whatever’s down there is. The energy must dissipate from dead matter.

Two more guards, from the back of the group, chime in:

GUARD CHARLEEN: So, what you’re saying is; kill the body…

She points at the other guard, a man named Terry.

GUARD TERRY: Kill the spirit!

Changing scenes to outside, we see thunder strike in the midst of prodigious rainfall battering on the four helicopters from before. They are making their way towards the distant forms of mountains, which seem almost to blend in with the cloud-darkened sky.

Inside the chopper at the formation’s center, we see Wenji and Angosin, sat in a back part of the vehicle opposite two guards. Each guard has their rifle trained on one of the two.

Rain beats down on the roof as Angosin turns to look at Wenji.

She is looking out the water-streaked window, her reflection in it showing that her eyes have assumed their avian aspect: elongated pupils, yellow sclera and all.

Back in the facility’s window-level, we see that Zain has exited his cell, and moved a few paces down the hall away from it. Behind him, both the doors to said cell still stand, though apparently dented and forced open by shifting crystal, as heavy-looking chunks of it streak the walls of the airlock and even some of the hallway outside. Zain looks back into the cell, toward where he hid the arrow’s head.

Interrupting his glance, and bringing him to whip his head around, he heard the ceiling-mounted speaker blare to life and issue a message he’s heard three times by now.

SPEAKER: Repeat, multiple anomalies have escaped. Unqualified staff please exit to safehouses by any available means, following specific guidelines for anomalies [uncategorized] and [uncategorized].

As this message sounds, the doors of Zain’s cell slam somewhat shut behind him by some mechanism, digging into the crystal that had before opened them.

Zain stares at the doors for a moment before shrugging and continuing down the hallway.

As he goes down it, he sees that all the light fixtures on the ceiling have gone dark, the only lighting being provided by the small, circular windows and red emergency-lights.

After a few paces, Zain hears a tapping sound that makes him stop.

Turning to his left, and looking through one of the hallway’s windows, he sees two snowy owls staring intently at him. Their pupils are dilated, and they do not move save for the wind and rain ruffling their feathers.

It is only after Zain turns and continues down the hall that a raven joins the two owls on the window-perch, all of them shifting to keep their baleful glare on him.