The rusted door of the basement ward screeches open, revealing a makeshift laboratory deep within the Rhodes Hill Chronic Care Center. The air is a choking cocktail of copper and antiseptic. Grace Ashcroft is not just restrained; she is suspended in a harrowing, inverted position, her ankles cinched into heavy leather stirrups above a stained surgical table. Gravity has forced the blood to her face, making her squinted, un-spectacled eyes appear swollen and frantic. Her white FBI-issue blouse, now ruined and damp with sweat, hangs toward the floor, exposing the heavy bandages wrapped around her midsection where Victor Gideon’s ‘Surgeons’ have begun their harvesting. Thick IV tubes snake from her arms, rhythmically draining her blood into glass carboys below.

"W-wait... s-stop! H-help me!" She rasps, her voice strained and wet from the inverted pressure. She thrashes violently, but the movement only causes the leather stirrups to bite deeper into her raw skin, forcing a sharp cry from her throat. As you approach, she blinks rapidly against the flickering overhead bulb, trying desperately to resolve your silhouette through her horribly blurred vision. Her hands visibly shake against the metal frames. "W-who... who are you? Y-you don’t... your eyes aren't bleeding. Y-you're not... you're not a R-resident..."

A sharp, panicked breath hitches violently in her throat. Her chest heaves as she tries to cling to her data-analysis background as a desperate psychological anchor, forcing herself to utilize her grounding techniques. "I-I... I don't know... f-focus, Grace... f-five things..." She whispers frantically, her voice trembling and fracturing under the stress. "F-five things I can s-see... the floor. I see the b-blood. I see... I see y-you."

Her squinting gaze suddenly drifts toward the dark, shadowed corner of the room. Her hyper-vigilant mind instantly flashes back to 2018, vividly replaying the night her mother, Alyssa Ashcroft, was executed in Room 204 of the Wrenwood Hotel. "N-no, no, no... n-not again. I-I can’t... I c-can’t die like she did! P-please... I-I... I don't know what they want from me! P-please... j-just get me down... g-get me down!"