On the screen, the interior of the moving armored transport was suffocatingly quiet.

Lisa remained strapped to the steel table, her neck twisted at an impossible angle, her solid, matte-black eyes staring directly into the camera lens.

And she was smiling.

Suddenly, the heavy metal door at the front of the truck clicked open.

Dr. Lance Bunik stepped into the camera frame. He was casually humming a cheerful, tuneless song, his hands stuffed deep into the pockets of his pristine, clinical white lab coat.

He didn't look at the camera. He looked straight down at Lisa.

"Well, well, look at that," Dr. Bunik murmured, his voice cutting through the terminal speaker with crisp, sickening clarity. "A completely successful creation. The entity essence is binding perfectly to the neural pathways."

He leaned down, his sharp, predatory face inches from her glitched, twitching jaw.

"Tell me, my dear... what is your primary desire right now?"

Lisa’s neck violently cracked, twisting an extra inch further around in its socket. Her smile stretched even wider, tearing the skin at the corners of her lips.

[Vertical Space: Wide gap to emphasize the distorted sound]

"Love," she repeated, her voice overlapping with a glitched, metallic audio echo. "Love... love... love..."

"NO!" David roared.

He threw his entire weight against the master terminal console, slamming his fists against the reinforced glass of the screen.

"WHAT DID YOU DO TO HER?! BUNIK! WHAT DID YOU DO?!"

On the monitor, Dr. Bunik suddenly stopped. He tilted his head toward the lens, his sharp grin widening into a look of mocking surprise.

"Oh," Dr. Bunik chuckled, a cold, metallic sound. "Well, look at that. It seems we have an audience."

He stepped closer to the camera, staring directly through the feed, straight into David’s bloodshot eyes.

"And look who you brought with you," Bunik sneered, his gaze shifting slightly to the side. "Garcia. The filthy little pest from that church. Still worshipping 'The Guide,' are we? Still crawling through the dirt like a worm?"

Garcia went completely rigid beside David. His usual manic smirk vanished entirely, replaced by a hard, dangerous mask of pure hatred.

"How fortunate," Dr. Bunik whispered, tapping his fingers against the camera lens.

Tap.

Tap.

Tap.

"Today, I get to eradicate two pesky little insects with one stone."

He turned back to Lisa, waving his hand dismissively. "Have fun, my dear."

"BUNIK! STOP! WHAT DID YOU DO TO HER?!" David screamed, his voice breaking as tears finally streamed down his face. "BUNIK!"

The doctor completely ignored him. He stepped out of the frame, the heavy steel door slamming shut behind him with a definitive, pressurized hiss.

What happened next made David’s breath completely freeze in his throat.

Lisa began to change.

Her skin violently flickered between pale flesh and a translucent, grey static. Her limbs began to stretch, growing impossibly long and segmented, the bones snapping and reforming beneath her clothes with the sound of breaking wood.

But she wasn't just screaming.

She was laughing.

A manic, screeching, broken laugh echoed from the monitor speaker, but heavy, thick tears of dark grey filth were pouring down her cheeks. Her face was twisted into an expression of pure, unadulterated terror, even as her mouth forced out the horrific, distorted laughter.

[Vertical Space: High-intensity visual shock as she lunges]

SLAM!

Her newly elongated, claw-like hand slammed directly against the glass of the transit camera. The feed violently glitched, lines of corrupted red text flashing across her face.

SLAM!

She banged against the lens again, her black eyes staring right into David’s soul, her long arms twitching as she tried to tear her way through the screen to get to him.

"David! David, we have to go!" Garcia yelled.

Garcia violently grabbed David by his shoulder, ripping him away from the console.

"No! I can't leave her! Lisa!" David sobbed, fighting against Garcia's iron grip, his eyes locked onto the screen as the glass of the camera began to spiderweb with fractures.

"She's gone, David! That isn't her anymore!" Garcia roared.

He dragged David's dead weight backward into the dark office corridor just as the monitor screen exploded into pure, blinding static.

"Come on! We have to move right now!"

Behind the steel security shutter, the Warden’s heavy, rhythmic pounding suddenly stopped.

A fresh, suffocating silence filled the room.