Right, sorry to get you riled up but I AM bleeding to death here, so…

Transcript

1: Xijo tries to sit up, holding his stomach, still wet with blood.

Vidali (off-panel): Doctor Xijo, stay down!

Xijo: You have seen that… things in action… it does not eat, it…

[Untranslated Martian]

…absorbs. It grows bigger with each body.

2: Vidali clutches a pack of bandages to her chest, eyes shut as she shudders and tears up.

3: Xijo, holding his side, looks over his shoulder at Vidali: she is leaning against the counter, hugging the bandages close.

Vidali: That thing is Sedjet. He’s my friend, our friend.

Xijo: He is a monster now.

What did you find in the genetic codes? What patterns?

4: Vidali slides down to the ground, tears in her eyes as she looks away.

Vidali: There’s… we…

Sentient Earth animals, like us… we have certain unique genetic markers, and… the Black Mass has them too.

Nothing else has those patterns.

5: She starts to cry, slumped entirely down to the ground.

Vidali: Sedjet was infected, once, but he’s been clean a long time… Julia was never infected at all. We have enough samples from previous incidents to know the difference.

For Sedjet to have changed, it… had to come from inside his own body.

6: Xijo silently watches her.

Vidali (off-panel): It’s like he was that stuff all along. If he is, then… then we all are.

Me… my wife, my parents… if any of us walked into that chamber, we’d turn into… that.