Across from Dana sits Dr. Victor, her handler and therapist. He wears casual slacks, sleeves rolled up like a civilian professor, but Dana knows better and he’s seen and done things she’s not even cleared to dream about.
DR. VICTOR
So... the ringing came back?
DANA
Yeah. The last mission blew open a frequency I haven’t heard since... well.
DR. VICTOR
Since when?
She leans back, jaw tightening, then exhales slowly.
DANA
I was about fourteen years old the first time I saw behind the veil. I used to know someone like you, but he was only in my dreams and I could only hear his voice. I used to call him The Scientist. He never told me his name. We used to have long, philosophical discussion when I was in bed. I don't think it was dreaming.
Dr. Victor gestures with two fingers- go ahead.
Dana looks up into the space just over his head. And then the memory begins like a reel she’s played a hundred times before.
The heat shimmered off the pavement, and the smell of cut grass and car exhaust hung in the air. Dana, then fourteen, wore a navy hoodie despite the weather, hands in her pockets, trying to play it cool around the older kids.
There were five of them that day:
Alyssa, tomboy with chipped black nail polish and a lighter in her sock.
Reggie, a self-loathing Arabian and had a name no one could pronounce
Tone, who secretly had a crush on Dana and always dared her to do things he was too scared to try.
Kam, quiet, twitchy, always watching.
And Dana, a daredevil who enjoyed entertaining and shocking her friends.
They’d gathered near the Marquette monument, which was a half-pyramid dedicated to a Lithuanian soldier who had died and his family donated the massive statue to the park, or so they believed.
TONE
I dare you to climb it.
DANA
She gets up and takes off her shoes, spits on the grey marble tilting up to the top like a slide and started scaling the stone.
Halfway up, someone muttered something about cops. Someone else said “Don’t be dumb.” But no one tried to stop her.
She reached the top and the clouds appeared backwards. Light reflected from behind and cut through the clouds in shadows of pyramids.
The world beneath her blurred. The sky fractured, not visually, but…like a memory. She felt it or sensed a crisscrossing grid of white-hot lines stretched across the sky and the park, over the people, even into the trees. Thin as thread, sharp as razors, the lines blinked like slow static.
Dana (voiceover)
“It was like seeing the code of the place. Like the simulation slipped.”
Behind the lines there are shadows. Not moving, but aware. They pulsed behind chainlink-like veils, watching. Me. Not with eyes, but with something older.
Her chest clenched. The sound…that ringing, that low hum began to rise, high and sharp.
She stumbled back, lightheaded and fell slowly as if gravity had changed.
She hit the ground hard. No scream. No sound. Just a solid thud and the gasp of five teenagers watching death come close.
Blood ran down from a cut on her temple, forming a red crescent in the crabgrass. Alyssa backed away. Kam looked like he might throw up. Tone kept repeating, “Shit. Shit. Shit.”
Provident Hospital was right across the street.
REGGIE
Should we call someone?
ALYSSA
And tell them we told her to climb it? You wanna get locked up?
TONE
She’s breathing. Just wait. She might be ok. She does this kind of shit all the time.
Seconds passed like lifetimes. And then, her eyes snapped open.
She sat up too fast. The blood had already stopped flowing.
DANA
We’re not free.
They stared.
DANA
This whole place…it's like we're stuck in a cage, no…it’s a grid. We’re outside the light. We can leave but we don't know all we have to do is walk away. You have to leave. If you stay... it gets inside you. There's a choice we all make inside ourselves whether we let them in.
Kind like how vampires can't come in the window until you open it, you know from that Jim Carrey movie? Once Bitten.
The kids all stared at each other.
They made a pact: No one tells. No hospital. No parents. Just… pretend it didn’t happen.
INT. THERAPY ROOM – PRESENT
DANA
They thought I was tripping. But I wasn’t. I was wide awake.
Dr. Victor watches her closely.
DANA (CONT’D)
And after that... I changed. Couldn’t unsee it. Couldn’t play normal anymore. I started hearing frequencies. Seeing signals in birds, phone lines, barcodes.
DR. VICTOR
And your friends?
DANA
They got scared of me. But they also got weirdly protective. Alyssa started walking me home even though she never said why. Reggie gave me his noise-cancelling headphones. Tone just stopped teasing me altogether. They knew I wasn’t the same, but they didn’t know how to help.
DR. VICTOR
And what happened to them?
DANA
Tone got hooked on lean. Alyssa disappeared into a rehab cult. Kam's doing time for stealing from a pharmacy. Reggie overdosed last year.
Dr. Victor exhales quietly.
DANA (CONT’D)
But me? I left. Something told me if I stayed, I’d get eaten alive.
DR. VICTOR
It didn’t just tell you. It chose you. You’re not infected with madness, Dana. You were initiated.
He scribbles something in his notebook—a brief, cryptic mark, and closes it.
DR. VICTOR (CONT’D)
The tone you’re hearing now... you said it’s not from above?
DANA
It’s below.
(sounds of locusts hovering up from a hole inside the earth echoes deep)
Whatever’s in the grid isn’t watching anymore. It’s moving.
DR. VICTOR
Then we’d better move too.
He rises and places a sealed folder on the desk. Dana opens it. Maps. Tunnel schematics. A red circle drawn beneath Chicago’s South Side.
DR. VICTOR (CONT’D)
Welcome back to the field, Dana.
Can you tell me exactly who you saw behind the light this time?