8 - 1

In the large hall of the hospital for special patients with rare forms of mental disorders, gathered patients are watching the evening news, which reports on the mysterious disappearance of all visitors to a tourist settlement in northwestern Czechia that happened 9 years ago. The news shows numerous posters posted about the search for all the missing individuals. The police are still unaware of all the circumstances of this mass disappearance, and there are no new leads, except for the discovery of a young girl with complete amnesia found at the scene, who is currently being held in a special closed institution for mentally ill individuals.

In her room, B also hears this report, continuing to draw something with white chalk near the back of her bed (the drawing resembles a part of Jacob's Ladder). She has to stop her activity during the regular evening rounds of the patients.

The doctor hands B the prescribed medications, noticing the wall next to the girl's bed covered in drawings. At that moment, B remains silent, gazing vacantly to the opposite end of the room. The doctor rhetorically inquires about the meaning of these drawings. At night, B discreetly washes away the medications she has been hiding under her tongue.

Within the walls of the hospital, B suffers from insomnia due to the constantly resurfacing memories of the entire group's death by the bleak ones and her numerous interrogations regarding this incident. During these interrogations, she had to pretend to be insane due to her paranoia about the presence of new followers who had emerged after the circle's demise. The girl reminds herself once again of her refusal to take all medications, including the sedative, in order to maintain a clear mind.

In her dreams, the girl sees fragments of her meetings with the angels and events from countless realities in which C, with the help of Jacob's Ladder, attempted to lead the group out of the settlement. Remembering some fragments from these dreams, C tries to reproduce Jacob's Ladder's scheme to find a way out at the moment when she first arrived at the settlement, hoping to prevent the entire settlement's demise.

B constantly receives offers for meetings from various media outlets. However, she rejects all of them, preferring to occasionally meet with her parents, with whom she also had to simulate her unstable condition. One particular persistent individual is a blogger named E, who regularly sends B requests for a meeting, asking for her help in completing the investigation of the mass disappearance incident in the settlement on her GoodArtAss channel. Despite E's numerous claims that she possesses exclusive information about the settlement incident, B turns her down every time, considering it just an excuse for a meeting.

Attending numerous procedures and therapies, B tries to dedicate all her free time to drawing fragments of Jacob's Ladder from memory on the wall near her bed's backrest. The other patients hardly pay any attention to B's actions, considering them just another symptom of the girl's psychological disorder.

Only one elderly man, suffering from schizophrenia and talking to himself, directly accuses B of killing his friends and simulating her condition during his episodes, urging the girl to take more chalk from him. However, neither B nor the others attach much importance to his words.

8 - 2

B constantly remembered C from multiple realities, admiring her ability to recreate and use the scheme. Throughout all this time, B was unable to perfectly recreate Jacob's Ladder and calculate the necessary coordinates leading to the past.

Soon, the girl receives another letter from E, inviting her to a meeting in which she assures B that she possesses the coordinates she needs. The message also claimed to have irrefutable evidence of B's contact with the angels. This letter intrigues B greatly, and she agrees to meet with E for the first time in nine years.

During the meeting, as a sign of trust, E immediately hands over to B the completed Jacob's Ladder scheme with the necessary coordinates marked on it. E claims to have been able to reproduce the scheme and understand its principles thanks to a user on an internet forum with the username DORAdude008, who also disappeared in the settlement. E promises to help B escape from the institution so that she can shed light on the circumstances of DORAdude008's disappearance and that of the others. She also agrees to provide a statement about the incident that occurred in the settlement.

B hesitates but eventually agrees to E's proposal. E acknowledges that she understands the reasons behind B simulating her condition and promises to keep it a secret. The two girls agree to meet again in a few days to help B escape from the institution.

On the day of the escape, E activates a hidden camera and instructs B to follow her. E leads B out of the building through service corridors, explaining that all the surveillance cameras have been remotely hacked and temporarily disabled by her assistant. Once outside, the girls reach a nearby wooded area where an assistant is waiting for them behind the wheel of a car (the administrative guy from the intermediate chapter). As they head towards the next transition point, E reminds B of her promise to provide her statement about the settlement incident. E turns on the camera and asks B to do it right now in the car.

B confesses on camera to simulating her condition, explaining that she did it out of fear of being tracked by the cult followers of the Circle of Exodus. She then goes into detail about the cult's main plan, directly accusing the cult and their front pharmaceutical companies of conducting cruel experiments on newcomers to the settlement.

Suddenly, a precise shot pierces the assistant's head, and the car veers off the road, crashing into a tree. E and B, covered in blood and with multiple wounds, manage to get out of the smoke-filled car, watching as armed medical personnel approach in the night. Horrified by the dead body of their assistant, E immediately starts running but collapses moments later from several shots to the back.

B is quickly apprehended by the approaching medical personnel, who knock her to the ground and point a gun at her head. Observing numerous tattoos in the form of the Circle's symbolism, B realizes that all the doctors and medical staff surrounding her were members of the cult. Mocking B about her failed escape, the captors roughly drag her towards a van. As the van doors close in front of her, B gazes at E's lifeless body, finally realizing that the Circle will continue to exist even after the deaths of all its members, as long as the cult's teachings endure.

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Suddenly, B regains consciousness in the rugged space in front of humanoid figures frozen in time. She quickly realizes that all the events from the moment the Circle of Exodus interrupted her path were a vision sent by the angels of one of the many possible futures.

8 - 3

Due to the multitude of nightmarish events from the near future playing out in her mind and the intense stress, B's skin pales, her pupils dilate and turn black, and her hair becomes silvery, similar to the flesh color of the humanoids. Realizing that her request will not only fail to destroy the cult but also lead to the deaths of those she holds dear, B whispers her final wish to the angels. Observing D's approach and looking at A and C frozen in time, B moves forward along the rugged corridor, past the immobile angels.

Walking to the end of the corridor, B finds herself in the same place where she was before the beginning of the Exodus, near the house on the outskirts of the settlement. During the early morning sunrise, the girl gazes from a hill at the bustling settlement, realizing that the angels have granted her request. Remembering the terrible fate that awaits the settlement, B understands that she has only one chance to make things right as she approaches the doorstep of the house. Entering inside, B pulls a hood over their head and heads towards a room on the upper floor of the house, where they notice their doppelganger, writhing in cold sweat from another nightmare. After B approaches closer, the doppelganger suddenly opens her eyes.

Seeing B, she panics, grabs a nearby blade, and stabs it into the girl, causing her hood to fall off. In the ensuing struggle, B forcefully knocks her frenzied copy off her feet, disarming her. Grabbing her by the throat with both hands, the girl kills her other self by strangling her. After recovering from the shock, B realizes what has happened, covering a heavily bleeding wound on her abdomen with her hand.

Descending to the attic, B bandages the wound, gathers all necessary items into a found backpack, and takes several cans of gasoline for the generator. There, B records some sort of video message (details not shown) on her blood-soaked smartphone, addressed to her deceased doppelganger.

Dousing all the rooms in the house, using up one of the cans, B heads to the settlement. There, B uses the catacombs to move discreetly, finding several houses and structures in different parts of the settlement not caught on surveillance cameras.

Also, drenching these buildings and houses with gasoline, B sequentially throws lit firecrackers into them, quickly starting fires. Leaving a bloody trail due to her wound, B heads to a house on the outskirts of the settlement.

Looking at the house, the girl experiences numerous flashbacks of her first meetings with A and visits to settlement C, after which she throws a lit firecracker onto its porch. The house quickly catches fire, and B collapses from heavy blood loss. A light rain begins.

The flames from B's other burned-down houses quickly spread to other homes and structures throughout the settlement, turning into a massive fire. This causes panic among newcomers to the settlement, and soon fire brigades, police, and the media arrive. The rain turns into a downpour, helping to extinguish the blaze.

8 - 4

In the subsequent large-scale video investigation by E, which had recently gained significant public attention, the mass arson in the settlement in northwest Czechia due to the incitement of several houses by one of the newcomers was discussed. The video explored numerous versions of the events with eyewitness interviews.

After dissecting all the major versions, the video continues, and E announces unique details and two exclusive interviews with people who, apparently, the suspect knew personally. The girl reveals that she had been in contact with the friend of the only person who died during the fire, whose remains were found in one of the burned houses.

In Interview C, presented as DORAdude008, the girl barely holds back tears due to the recent funeral of B. She claims to have conducted her own investigation into the circumstances of her friend's death, citing a forensic examination that revealed signs of physical strangulation before death from carbon monoxide poisoning. C is convinced that this, along with the bloody, punctured wound on the suspect's body, is evidence of a struggle between her and B.

Next, E announces that she has received consent to publish a video message from the suspect, which C found in her email on the day of the tragedy. In the following shots, the girl with silver hair and extremely pale skin lists the names of organizations and specific individuals among politicians and businessmen who had collaborated with the cult Circle of Exodus, which had conducted inhumane experiments on newcomers in the settlement for decades.

The suspect further explains that she set the fire in an attempt to prevent the next wave of impending investigations, destroying their foothold in the settlement, which would attract worldwide attention and tie the hands of the cult's followers. She mentions that everything she listed had been provided to her by those she was desperately seeking in the cult.

In closing, the suspect apologizes to C for having to sacrifice the B she had always known in order to end the endless suffering of everyone who ended up in the settlement. Concluding the recording, she acknowledges the impossibility of justifying her actions, smiling and remarking that C and a certain A make a good couple.

Then E reports on a chance encounter with A among the ruins of the settlement, where he went with friends. E shows him the recording of the suspect's message and asks him to comment on his mention in it.

A states that he decided to visit the settlement because of a sense of unfulfilled duty: A was supposed to arrive the next day, after the fire, at the same house where the remains of the only victim were found. A admits that though he had never met the suspect, B, or her friend before, vague images of an unrealized past in which he knew each of them personally continue to haunt him.

C expresses a similar sentiment, describing her enduring sensations of an uncanny resemblance between the suspect and the deceased B. Showing a photo of both girls on screen, E notes that upon closer inspection, the attacker and the victim inexplicably resemble each other.

Then E questions C about her future actions. C assures that she will continue to investigate all the circumstances of B's death, even using everything the suspect mentioned in her message, despite her apparent insanity.

E reminds C that after the reports of the suspect's death from blood loss, her body was not found in any hospitals or morgues, and therefore, it cannot be definitively stated that the girl is dead. In response, C claims that this only confirms someone's attempt to conceal the truth in the suspect's words. (INSERT) Laid out on the frozen ground are ribbed plates in a structured manner, resembling angels, placing a humanoid figure in organic fluid with a recently cut umbilical cord, missing half of one leg and an arm, as well as numerous pieces of flesh.

In conclusion, A and C make identical confessions that they are regularly haunted by lifelike nightmares in which they witnessed each other's deaths even before meeting for the interview. Suddenly, E also makes a similar confession. At the end of the video, A, C, and E agree to work together to uncover the truth behind the events.

gree to work together to get to the truth of what happened.