Prologue

Close up of a digital timer that reads Evaluation Begins In: 15…14…13…

The view pulls back to a small metal-walled room. The countdown timer is mounted above a large access hatch on one wall. Four people dressed in identical bright yellow jumpsuits face the hatch. Three of them are in a panic, shifting, sweating, eyes wild.

“What the fuck is this? What the fuck? What the fuck is this?”

“They can’t do this, right? They gotta send us back, right? YOU GOTTA SEND US BACK!”

“What do we do? Who knows what we do?”

One figure, the smallest, leans against the back wall, eyes in shadow. The hand-written name tag on her jumpsuit reads RAT.

When the timer hits 7, she makes a sudden movement to the front.

“If you skags want to get through this, listen up. We move in pairs. You and you, head out the door and break left. You! Stick with me. we go right.” They stare at her.

3…2…1 The hatch opens with a hiss.

“MOVE IT, SKAGS!” Rat shoves the first pair out into the corridor beyond. They look at her fearfully and then dash off to the left. Rat’s partner begins to move out the hatch, but she stops him with a vice-like grip on his arm. “Wait!”

They stand frozen as the timer continues to tick, this time in increasing numbers.

An eerie hissing shriek echoes through the corridor.

“NOW!” Rat barks, bolting into the corridor and darting right. Her partner stumbles after her.

“Shit! Fuck! Wait! What the fuck was that?!”

“Keep moving!” Rat leads them on a precise path through the twisting corridors.

Echoing screams of agony, all too human, echo distantly off the metal walls.

Rat stops her partner at a corridor intersection. His breath is coming in heaves and gasps.

The sound of scrabbling movement can be heard approaching quickly.

“Ah, Christ…Where…Where do we go now?”

Rat cocks her head. “Nowhere. You stay here.”

With a lightning fast move, Rat pins the other man to the wall, breaks his ankle with a savage kick and smashes an elbow into his temple. He drops, shrieking to the floor grating. Rat sprints towards a corner of the intersection. She leaps, braces a foot on one wall and the propels herself diagonally upward. Her fingers grip the lip of a narrow gap between the top of the wall and the ceiling grating. With a moan through gritted teeth she forces her body into the tight space, shredding skin off her scalp and elbows.

A rising wail behind her is abruptly cut off by the wet gristly crunching of savage violence.

The view switches to the perspective of a security camera feed focused on the small gap in which RAT hid herself. Arterial spray splatters the wall beneath.

“She found another gap, Madam Director. Do you want maintenance to seal it?”

The shot cuts to Director Hesper Lynch (Judy Dench) in a severely tailored suit.

“No. Leave it. I admire her ruthlessness.”

Rat