4 – 1
A meets the newly arrived C, who had been a childhood friend of B and also a student at the same Berlin university as B. C shares all the information she knows about B's last days with A: B had constantly insisted that C should never come to the settlement and had revealed all subsequent events to the public. C admits that she initially didn't believe her friend's words but felt that she needed help.
Soon, they discover that after B's suicide, her body mysteriously disappeared. After this, C shares details with A about a cult called the "Cult of the Exodus," which she suspects is behind many tragic events in the settlement and may have been responsible for the disappearance of B's body.
Following news of B's suicide, there are mass attempts to leave the settlement, all of which fail due to a spatial anomaly. Those trapped within the anomaly quickly realize their hopelessness.
(INSERT) In the middle of an abandoned room with ridged walls lies a spherical, partially ruined stone object resembling a non-functioning fountain, from which organic matter oozes out of openings.
After some time, the settlement is plagued by waves of nightmares and episodes of unexplainable madness. This leads to the first outbreaks of violence, escalating into a massacre over the remaining resources. A and C decide to stick together, taking shelter in B's house.
Order is eventually restored, and the survivors are organized by a man in a motorcycle jacket named D. He claims to be a retired German police officer and sources indicate that a cult, whose members are landlords of the city's houses, is behind the events in the city. D shares details of his daughter's disappearance 15 years ago in the city and is convinced that the cult is responsible, urging the survivors to search for cult members among themselves.
Initial suspicions of the local bar owner, a close friend of A, being involved with the cult are not confirmed due to his alibi (he arrived in the settlement only a few days before all the events) and he dies from injuries sustained during the group's interrogation.
This greatly undermines the trust of the entire group in D. A and C decide to stick together, distrusting the others. They grow closer and eventually engage in a sexual relationship.
Soon, the settlement is attacked by a group of exact doppelgangers of the survivors, their bodies covered in numerous tattoos depicting dates and a cipher. During the attack, D and most of his followers are killed.
(INSERT) From cracks in the partially collapsed stone monument shaped like a humanoid head, viscous streams of organic fluid flow, forming a continuous mass.
A and C manage to survive, thanks to a group of armed individuals in strange cloaks who arrive in time, killing all the doppelgangers. The cloaked figures introduce themselves as members of the "Circle of Exodus," the same organization D had mentioned. They offer to lead the survivors out of the settlement, ignoring questions about their intentions and plans.
Soon, the temperature in the settlement drops sharply, and snow falls. The members of the Circle begin to provide the group with everything they need: food, warm clothing, and energy from generators, further gaining their trust. However, A and C actively try to convince the others that the cult knows how to leave the settlement but is hiding it for sinister purposes.
4 - 2
The cultists continue to interrogate the entire group, asking about their mental states, nightmares, and interactions with B before her suicide. During the questioning, A claims that he didn't know B well, while C directly accuses the Circle members of kidnapping B's body.
(INSERT) On a frozen wall, covered with a continuous living tissue intermixed with organic wires, half of the head of a humanoid frozen in a seated position, with a mouth wide open in horror, has fused.
After another wave of mass hallucinations and intensified nightmares, the cult forces the group to take a course of a certain drug that suppresses the symptoms of madness. At the same time, the cult intensifies its surveillance of the group, secretly activating cameras in their homes and throughout the city. They kill a couple caught having sex in an abandoned psychiatric clinic building after noticing an activated camera.
One night, the cultists burst into homes throughout the settlement and, without revealing the reasons, gather everyone in one of the alleyways. Under the threat of execution, the cultists order the group to move in specified directions along the perimeter of the settlement, surrounded by the forest, and administer another dose of the drug.
A and C, along with the group, follow the chosen path under the escort of Circle members. After several hours, they reach one of the familiar local houses, where the organization's members instruct them to stay. None of the group understands why they have returned to the settlement. C privately speculates that the cult somehow led them into another reality.
Soon, the Circle members completely leave the settlement, leaving the group unobserved. Despite C's suspicions, A and the others immediately begin to prepare a plan to resist the cult.
4 - 3
Early the next morning, an armed sect of cultists reappears in the settlement. They split up and begin searching for survivors in the deserted village. During their search, C becomes separated from the group while fending off an attack.
As the cultists enter houses one by one, they are killed by survivors armed with everyday objects. After removing the hood from one of the slain cultists, the survivors recognize them as exact duplicates of some of their own comrades. Meanwhile, several other survivors are taken hostage by the cultists.
Eventually, the cult members reach a secret chamber, where they activate surveillance cameras to identify the hidden survivors. Using their communication systems, they demand that the remaining survivors surrender, threatening to execute their captive comrades.
Realizing the hopelessness of the situation, the entire group, including A, emerges with their hands raised. The cultists remove their hoods, revealing that some of them are precise copies of certain members of the survivor group. Among the cultists is a duplicate of A, who threatens to execute the survivors if they don't hand over C, taking the captive A as a hostage.
Discovering the bodies of their comrades, the duplicate A flies into a rage, shooting several members of the survivor group who resist. This prompts the other duplicate cultists to open fire on the survivors, killing several more.
Suddenly, all the duplicate cultists are killed by precise shots from an unknown direction. Only the duplicate A, who lost his weapon due to a well-aimed shot, is quickly subdued and disarmed by the remaining members of the survivor group.
Shortly thereafter, C emerges from the foliage along with D, who is armed with an HK SL8 rifle and a cigarette in his mouth. D immediately restrains the duplicate cultist A. C explains that after being separated from the group, she encountered D in the forest. He promptly asked her to take him to the location of the cult's attack. Upon noticing C, duplicate A addresses her, claiming that she is not the C he came for. His words leave the others baffled.
Later that evening, D interrogates the duplicate in an empty hangar on the outskirts of the settlement, questioning him about the objectives of his squad's arrival. Failing to get any answers, D starts torturing the duplicate, persistently asking about the cult's interest in C and where they had met before.
A keeps glancing at his watch throughout the interrogation, which raises suspicions for D. Unable to endure the pain any longer, A confesses that he and the other duplicates were sent to the town to find C, who had escaped from the organization. Lighting a cigarette, D realizes that they are talking about a copy of C that is somewhere in this reality.
As midnight approaches, A suddenly addresses an unknown presence, urging them to leave immediately and do what they both had wanted from the beginning. After that, D carefully scans the area around the hangar but finds no one. With a malicious smile, the duplicate announces that soon there will be only one real A left. Realizing the critical nature of the situation, D quickly kills the duplicate A with a gunshot to the head before hastily leaving the hangar.
(INSERT) An organic light source embedded in the ribbed ceiling directs its rays onto a figure lying in a liquid-filled basin, connected to a curved, semi-mechanical limb standing on the ground.
Meanwhile, A and C spend time together on the porch of a house on the outskirts, discussing the events: why the duplicate A became a cultist, what his motives were, and what D hopes to achieve. The couple also recalls the death of D, suspecting that the current D may be his duplicate.
Afterward, they broach the topic of B's suicide. C mentions that once, B shared her dreams and visions in which humanoid beings slowly approached her. Speculating about these entities, the couple believes that they were representations of the cultists, whose approach B intuitively sensed. Standing on the porch, the couple both hope that they and the remaining survivors will finally be able to leave the settlement.
Noticing that it's almost midnight on his watch, A calls C back into the house. Suddenly, a phantom-like figure resembling C appears in front of her. It grabs C by the head, turning her toward it. Unable to resist the powerful grip, C gazes into the cold, blue eyes and mouth of the phantom, which ignites in blue flames and burns to ashes within seconds. Afterward, the shadow instantly disappears.
In shock, A rushes to a small pile of ashes—the only thing left of C. Taking the ashes with trembling hands, A realizes that C is no more.
4 - 4
(INSERT) Amidst the gray mist with eternal rainfall, columns of ribbed humanoid busts are randomly stacked on top of each other.
Holding C's ashes in his hands, A replayed the moment of her death countless times in his mind. Suddenly, in the distance, A hears a very familiar voice and notices a familiar silhouette approaching him. Upon closer inspection, A, in disbelief, sees C rushing toward him, without her glasses.
As she approaches, C immediately starts questioning A about what happened. In response, A continues to gaze at the smoldering ashes, stating that the C he knew is dead, and the one before him is just another duplicate.
Shortly after, D arrives at the scene, quickly realizing that he's late. Seeing the ashes, D invites C and A into the house to discuss the ongoing situation. As she leaves, C notices slightly burnt and cracked round glasses peeking out from under the scattered ashes. She quietly retrieves them.
Inside the house, A immediately asks C to share everything she knows about the shadow that killed her. C recalls that during the cult's briefings, the "bleak" were mentioned as entities formed from some dense, unclear matter, acting like an immune system, destroying foreign objects that enter a specific reality.
After hearing this, A tries to find out why C became the target of the "bleak" and how they select their victims. C struggles to answer, admitting that she knows very little about the "bleak."
4 – 5
At the request of D, the girl remembers that she, a copy of A, and the others were recruited into the Circle of Origin, with promises of help to escape from the settlement. In the cult, during special briefings, the recruits are informed about the existence of countless parallel realities where events unfold in various scenarios, and the fate of the same people can change drastically.
The Circle knows a way to move between realities from the point of origin, which is the settlement, using Jacob's scheme. It indicates the paths at given coordinates leading from the point of origin to parallel dimensions.
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From the cult's archives, C learns about the Contactees - individuals capable of interacting with angels due to their unique brain structure. The angels themselves are poorly understood, but it is known that they are some organic embodiments of higher matter, existing beyond space and time, capable of influencing any other matter and altering reality around them.
Periodically, angels materialize in one of the realities, a process referred to as the Exodus, lasting about two weeks. The time and place of each Exodus depend on the presence of a Contactee there and are calculated in advance by the cult. The reasons and purposes of the angelic Exodus remain unknown. Everyone in the vicinity of the Exodus starts to contact angels in their dreams and visions, seeing distorted images of events and people significant to them. As the angels materialize in human reality and the Exodus concludes, this effect intensifies, inevitably leading to irreversible loss of sanity and the complete obliteration of all signs of individuality, as only Contactees can truly grasp the essence of the angels.
C sheds tears – she reveals that she escaped from the cult, discovering the body of B from whom they extracted the brain. After hearing this, A, who had previously considered C's words as nonsense, bombards the girl with questions about B. C admits that B was also one of the Contactees and suffered from a rare form of madness, likely the reason for her suicide.
After B's death, the cult abducted her body for a detailed examination of her brain. After studying its structure in detail, the cult managed to supplement the scheme of Exoduses with new coordinates, gaining the ability to move between realities.
Following this, C strongly demands that everyone left in the settlement be gathered, asking A and D to keep the death of her copy secret, promising to reveal the secret of her death later, warning that time is running out. When questioned about why they should trust C, the girl responds that the Circle is looking for her specifically, and she is also in danger. She offers them a choice: to give her a chance or to stay here, waiting for the Circle members.
C informs those gathered about the urgent need to leave the settlement, as the cult will arrive here soon. The girl assures them that she knows a way to move between dimensions, which the cult also uses, suggesting fleeing from the sect to another reality by making a transition. C explains that everyone present needs to go together in the right direction, calculated using a special scheme of Exoduses.
The group received C's proposal with skepticism, but D vouched for the girl, lying that this method of transportation was revealed during the interrogation of A's double, who had committed suicide. To convince the group, C demonstrates a certain scheme – a cryptic drawing with intersecting symbols, axes of coordinates, and numbers, claiming that she can decipher it.
Despite not fully trusting C's copy, A decides to support her plan, remembering her promise to reveal the secret of her own copy's death. A's support for C's proposed plan finally convinces the others to follow the girl.
(INSERT) On organic appendages covered in mucus, tightly interwoven with each other, with visible moving impulses, numerous partially formed and mutilated humanoid heads are located, pulsating constantly.
After some time, D returns to the hangar, where he interrogated and killed A's double to dispose of his body. Carrying the corpse to the back yard of the hangar and then lighting another cigarette, D notices C watching him. The man beckons the girl over, stating that A had asked precisely her to finish what was started.
In response, C simply watches in silence as D pours kerosene over A's body. Throwing a lit cigarette onto the body, the man asks the girl for forgiveness, saying he had no other choice. Watching the fire from A's burning body, C assures the man that he doesn't need to apologize because he did everything possible to protect others.
Afterward, one of the group members approaches D, inquiring about what to do with the collected bodies of the doubles from the Circle. D demands that they be burned. C continues to silently gaze at the flames of A's remains.
Left alone, C tidies up the glasses she had picked up. Approaching the window, the girl, for the first time in a long while, clearly sees through the small cracks in the lenses the streets of the settlement, which have fallen into decay.
4 – 6
After a day of preparation, the group follows C towards the forest, noticing armed members of the Circle scouring the area. D demands that they immediately discard all the weapons taken from the shattered group of doubles - the cultists - to expedite their movement. The group manages to remain unnoticed, hiding in the morning mist of the forest.
(INSERT) On a cracked gray stone slab, a bust of a humanoid with its head tilted upwards is carved, with the upper right part detached, and crossed arms with some missing fingers.
Emerging from the mist, the group once again enters the settlement, which is now completely deserted. While surveying the area, the group notices traces of recent human presence here.
Soon, in a pit dug on the roadside, the group discovers a mass grave of their shot doubles, nearly matching the number of members in their group. Each member of the group finds their own copy among the partially decomposed bodies. Nearby, they find the body of A, tortured with stab wounds, and the shot copy of C lying on one of the forest paths leading to the psychiatric hospital. D suggests that the sect members had already been in this settlement, killing all the doubles.
Following this, C confesses that the transition to this reality was made using coordinates she obtained from the cult's archive, which led to the settlement and were used by the cult as a testing ground for their experiments. The girl assures them that such a step bought them some time to calculate the next coordinates and find a way out of the settlement.
As they burn the bodies of the doubles in a makeshift pyre, the group questions why the Circle organization conducts its research, resorting to such mass tortures and killings. C recalls regular meetings within the cult, where the circle's curator, wearing a mask made of mail without eye holes, explained the main goal of the entire organization - to find a path to a reality where all of society's global problems are solved, and humanity reaches its peak of development.
The girl admits that she found the cult's hypocrisy disgusting from the very beginning. In C's opinion, the Circle is not worthy of the ideal world it is trying to find, conducting inhumane experiments and committing mass murders in the process.
According to D, confirmed data on the Circle organization is scarce. According to European intelligence agencies, the organization has a global network of pharmaceutical corporations allegedly conducting various brain disease studies. D recalls a report from one of the investigators who died under strange circumstances, describing a legend of the origin of the Circle's doctrine found on a little-known Japanese thematic forum.
(FLASHBACK) From the report: Circle members are followers of a Catholic named Matteo Yakov, a theoretical physicist and mathematician who lived somewhere in Eastern Europe during the late Renaissance. His daughter claimed to regularly communicate with angels in her dreams and visions, who could answer any of her questions and predict the future.
Based on his daughter's descriptions, the professor created a scheme that could predict the future of others with high accuracy. The scheme, named after its creator, quickly gained popularity among the upper echelons of society, glorifying the scientist among the intellectual elite.
Soon, the professor's daughter was found hanged in a barn due to tormenting visions. The deceased daughter, in the form of a phantom, began to appear in her father's dreams, telling him about the existence of numerous parallel worlds and predicting the imminent arrival of angels in their world. Reflecting his daughter's words in the scheme, the scientist mathematically proved the existence of parallel realities within the infinite set, where certain disembodied minds had become aware of themselves and their identity.
Despite having many supporters among European universities, the theory was rejected by the higher scientific community. In the following years, there were mass murders of opponents of Yakov's theory among prominent scientists and high-ranking officials across Europe, carried out by unknown individuals in cloaks with crossbows.
Eventually, Matteo Yakov died of syphilis, and his remains were only recently discovered in one of the Spanish monasteries. Modern research into Matteo Yakov's biography revealed that his contemporaries considered him mentally unstable, and the existence of his daughter was doubted.
After learning all of this about the Circle's actions, the group begins to question how so much information about what was happening in the settlement, had remained largely unnoticed by the public. In response to this, C assures them that such reports on the events in the settlement are soberly assessed only by people suffering from the "rabbit hole syndrome" (persistent, evidence-free, escalating belief that some event is happening according to a preplanned conspiracy).
(PRESENT TIME) While inspecting the attic of one of the houses, A and D stumble upon a box of unopened alcohol. As they drink and smoke a cigarette, D remembers how his double had terrorized the settlement, brutally killing an innocent person during torture. A then points out that D's double had used similar methods to deal with his own double.
Suddenly, D aggressively denies all accusations, claiming that after arriving in the city, he was abducted by unknown assailants and held captive by the Circle, from which he barely managed to escape. Not expecting such a reaction, A immediately tries to calm him down, assuring him that he only blames his own double.
Regaining his composure, D lights another cigarette, claiming that he feels like his past is not real, and some of his actions feel unconscious, as if driven by an irresistible force. As he leaves, D declares that he is ready to do anything to achieve his ultimate goal - the complete destruction of the Circle organization.
(INSERT) On the ascending staircase, strewn with stone fragments, numerous open vertical chambers are scattered - spheres with ribbed shells, from which severed tubes protrude, oozing an organic fluid.
A few days later, a sudden outbreak of madness occurs in the city - one of the group members, experiencing severe hallucinations, kills another. Isolating the murderer, the group agrees that such outbreaks will become more frequent due to the absence of the drug that suppressed the symptoms of madness, previously provided by the cult. The group realizes they need to act quickly before they begin to lose their sanity.
Over the next few days, the group actively prepares for a new transition while C attempts to calculate the necessary coordinates. Early one morning, a well-armed detachment from the Circle enters the settlement.
4 – 7 (Extra)
A, wearing the cultist cloak, cleans his P90 while remembering the heart-shaped note that C attached to his message on the fridge, asking him to contact her. Then, A sinks into memories of the last night spent with C.
(FLASHBACK) Naked, A and C lie in bed after their intimacy, unaware that there is a hidden camera in the room, recording their every move. The couple recalls the last cult gathering: precisely at 11:55, the curator takes two bound men with taped mouths to the podium, who are exact copies of each other, declaring one of them a defector from the Circle's teachings.
Exactly at midnight, a shadow with burning blue eyes approaches one of the men. Seizing him by the head with a deadly grip, the shadow stares into the man's eyes, incinerating him with blue flames before abruptly disappearing.
(END OF THE COUPLE'S MEMORIES) C repeats the main law of trans-dimensional travel, voiced by the curator at that gathering: in each reality, there can be only one person's identity. If an outsider who enters a reality does not replace the identity of their counterpart before midnight from the moment of their appearance, they will inevitably be destroyed by the Bleak.
A asks C to stop talking about this, and C wonders how, after everything that has happened, they can still believe in the Circle. A replies that they have no other choice because only thanks to the cult's drug have they not yet lost their sanity.
Trying to persuade A, C assures him that the cult is manipulating everyone for their sinister purposes, intentionally causing addiction to their drug. As she leaves, she tells A that B always reminded her: there is always a choice.
(PRESENT TIME) Suddenly, one of A's acquaintances approaches him, informing him of the start of another general assembly at the complex building at 23:00. As they make their way to the meeting place, the two guys discuss C's disappearance, noting that it's almost impossible to remain unnoticed among the multitude of surveillance cameras.
Approaching the building when it's already dark, the guys observe several cars (Toyota Land Cruiser 200) bearing the insignia of the Circle of the Outcome. A and his companion enter the building, where they are met by the Circle's curator, wearing a chainmail mask without eye slits under a hood. He leads them through dark corridors to the main hall, filled with a group of recruits.
The curator takes the stage, surrounded by armed sect members, and announces the recent escape from the cult. He explains that the fugitive managed to learn the test method of trans-dimensional travel and used it to escape. Everyone present realizes he's talking about C. The curator then informs them that the Circle knows the reality where the fugitive is hiding.
Concluding the assembly, the curator warns that the actions of the fugitive are dangerous and may have unpredictable consequences, announcing the start of a special mission to eliminate her. In the settlement, the Circle's overseers provide A and the others with equipment and weapons, warning them that the operation will begin at dawn.
Alone at home, A ponders the reason for C's escape. Suffering from insomnia, C replays many memories of the days spent together with her. Finally falling asleep, A has a dream in which C managed to find a way to travel between realities and meets B, accompanied by some humanoid beings.
Early in the morning, one of the recruits informs A about the assembly's preparations. From the assembly point, A, along with the others, is taken to the psychiatric hospital building, where they are informed of the mission to eliminate the fugitive.
The squad is presented with a detailed map of the catacombs beneath the hospital building, which the cultists used to move quickly around the settlement. After receiving another dose of the drug and being escorted to the entrance of one of the tunnel branches, the overseers point out the correct tunnel to the new reality where the fugitive is hiding. Following the tunnel, the squad finds itself on the outskirts of an entirely deserted settlement.
Following the instructions from the overseers communicated via radios, the squad settles in the settlement and begins searching for the fugitive, activating the surveillance camera system throughout the area. However, days of active searching yield no results, leading some members of the squad to make a failed attempt to return to the previous reality through the same tunnel, which only leads them to a dead end.
One early morning, the squad notices through the cameras that a large group of their own duplicates, under instructions from the overseers, is approaching, while C, accompanied by a man, disables the video surveillance system. Realizing that after this, C will likely try to hide in the settlement, the squad decides to take action and heads there to complete the operation.
s to take action and heads there to complete the operation.