The River Episode 1.07 The Experiment

Deep within the perilous jungle of the Boiuna, Tess, Lincoln and the rest of the crew have arrived at an abandoned facility. Cars, fences, and remnants of humanity abound. From tapes, we recognize it to be the exact location that Emmet was delivered after being looked after by the Xulo tribe. Except when Emmet was left there, the facility was bustling with life. Now, it's as if the people that once inhabited this facility stopped what they were doing in the middle of doing it and completely abandoned their camp. As if there was a sudden exodus or worse, if everyone just... disappeared. Lincoln and Tess call out for Emmet until Lena warns them that they don't know what happened here, and something clearly did, so they should play it safe and keep quiet.

Having wandered off on his own Kurt pulls out his satellite phone and places a call. Unbeknownst to him however, an always alert AJ is watching. The call goes to the voicemail of a woman named Hana...

Having investigated the exterior, the crew takes the next logical step and enters the large building, not knowing what lies inside. With Kurt's gun leading the way, the group finds the building ransacked. Furniture pushed up against doors and windows as if to keep someone or... something out. Bloody footprints eerily graffiti the walls, books on genetics clutter the shelves and then, faintly at first, a buzzing sound begins to fill the halls. Following the noise into a freezer, Clark opens the door and is greeted by hundreds, no, thousands of flies that pour out swarming around his face. But more than that, it's the overpowering stench of rot emanating out that forces Clark to retreat and slam the door. But not before he sees bodies hanging from the ceiling! Others piled up on the floor! The question on everyone's mind quickly becomes: is one of them Emmet?

Lincoln steps up. If his dad is one of the people in the room, then he is going in to find out. With Jonas following him, Lincoln enters the putrid freezer of death.

Inside, the bodies are piled in place, with what appears to be some sort of organization to their stacking. They are torn up, ripped apart by what appear to be teeth marks. It can't be animals because all the food in the kitchen remains untouched. Again leading the crew to fear just who... or what, did this?

Thinking everyone is distracted with Lincoln's trek into the freezer, Kurt slinks away not knowing that AJ, once again, has caught him when he thinks he's alone.

Now in the hallway, Kurt takes out his satellite phone... dials... ring-ring. From down the hall a ringing phone echoes. Kurt follows the ringing to a bedroom where he finds a picture of himself with a beautiful young woman. All the while, AJ spies on him through a window. We learn that the photo is of Kurt and his fiancé, Hana. What she's doing in the Amazon remains a mystery, but Kurt, moving to the closet, closer to the ringing phone, is hoping to find out... he opens the door and... nothing. The phone sits alone. Turning quickly, Kurt spots AJ, and his natural reflex kicks in as he cocks his gun and almost kills him.

Meanwhile, Lincoln, Tess, Jonas, Lena and Clark search for Kurt and AJ but also continue to explore every corner in every room hoping that something leads them to Emmet.

Having wandered into what appears to be an operating room, Lincoln says that with the equations and notes on the whiteboard, mixed with the books they found earlier they seem to be in some sort of research facility. What they were researching, however, remains a mystery. Their ethics clearly weren't up to regulations as they find a deceased young boy floating in captivity submerged in some sort of preserving liquid. Upon a closer look, it's a young Xulo boy who has the same symbol as Lincoln's necklace branded onto his chest—matching the birthmark that Lena has on the back of her neck.

Behind them, the door suddenly flies open! Jumping back, our crew turns to find Kurt and AJ, but they are not alone. It seems that Kurt has found someone else alive. A familiar face. A former loyal crewmember of Emmet's. Standing before them is, Rabbit! But all the noise must have alerted someone, something, as a distant and eerie growl is heard. Rabbit knows what's out there. "They're coming. They're hungry," she warns.

Our crew takes off down the hall as quickly, but also as quietly as they can. The facility is huge and as they round one corner one of them waits for our crew. It looks human at a distance but it moves too fast and awkwardly to be one. It's barreling down right at them. Kurt unloads shot after shot not missing- but yet it still charges! Only a few feet from the beast, Kurt lines up a headshot and finally drops the thing. They can be killed. But certainly not easily. They finally get some kind of look at what they are up against, and if this beast was human then that was a long time ago.

Our crew makes it into a room and barricades themselves in. Tess questions Rabbit. It turns out that Emmet was there. The doctors at the facility were helping him. Then it happened. "They changed," Rabbit says, and notes that the last place she saw him was in the infirmary.

On the other side of the room, Lincoln and Lena power up a computer and after some investigation find footage of a recorded operation. They figure out that this was a research facility looking for a specific gene sequence in the Xulo's. It appears this facility was researching a cure for cancer and in this last recorded video, we see that they found it. That's when Hana, their security officer and Kurt's fiancé, steps in and tries to apprehend the cure. Things don't go smoothly and she open fires on the lead doctor, missing with her first shot, instead hitting a container releasing a test virus into the air which instantly mutates those that inhale it. The head doctor falls to the ground as the skin on his face begins to bubble up as if it was boiling water.

As our crew finishes watching the video, they notice a light streaming through the room's window. A pattern. Someone is signaling to them and it's coming from the infirmary. Could it be? Is Emmet calling out to them?

With Rabbit leading the way, they make a break for the infirmary. Almost there, they happen across the lair of the mutated ones. On the ground they lie, asleep. Tip toeing as silently as they possibly can, our crew makes it through, but Kurt hangs back. He spots Hana. Safely around the corner the crew's cameras try to see Kurt, but they aren't able to. All they're able to catch is the flashing light from Kurt's gun as he rifles off shots onto the sleeping, flesh eating beasts.

Now safely in the infirmary, Tess eagerly searches for the person who signaled them. But to her grave disappointment, they find the room empty and the light she saw was light reflecting off of a wind chime that hangs in the window.

This most recent defeat stings Tess more than any prior. To be so close, to have so much hope ripped from underneath her... it's excruciating and she finally says it, "Emmet's gone isn't he?... He's dead."

As those heavy words hang in the air, a dragonfly hovers up near Lincoln. It flutters in front of him as if it wants Lincoln to notice. Lincoln does and he looks to his mother and says, "I don't think it's over."

Trusting his instincts, Lincoln follows the dragonfly as it flies up the stairs, out of the room, and onto the roof, where it lands on a ladder. With Lincoln leading the way, the crew climbs the up and into another room to find something beyond their wildest imaginations. In the corner of the room, hanging and encased in what appears to be a chrysalis of sorts, is Dr. Emmet Cole.

Tess grabs a knife and gently cuts into the membrane. Emmet spills out covered in slimy mucus. He is unconscious. His airway clear and breathing, but unconscious nevertheless. Then they hear it. The same screams that echoed and hunted them in the facility. It appears Kurt didn't kill them all in the hallway. Out of options, they take off with Emmet through the jungle, making a break for the safety of The Magus.

It's a race and the mutated ones are fast, but our team has a head start. Thwacking, slicing, and leaping when they need to, our team makes it onto the Magus safely and pushes off down the river as quickly as they can.

Now on The Magus, Tess and Lincoln sit with Emmet. There's a calm amidst the ship. Jahel drives, Clark cuts video and Rabbit sits alone on the stern. Tess comes up for a word and informs Rabbit that they will be dropping her off at the next village. Rabbit understands and thanks Tess for taking her aboard and saving her life. Especially after she left her husband to die. Tess leaves and we stay with Rabbit -the young woman who left Dr. Emmet Cole in the jungle with no supplies. She sits alone, wrapped in a blanket, lost in thought. She moves towards the navigation room but before she can make it, she is tackled from behind by a mutated monster that was able to make its way on board. It throws her to the ground and begins to feast.

In the editing room, Kurt confronts AJ and tells him to delete the video he shot of him earlier. AJ replies by asking Kurt what he's really doing here and to that Kurt comes clean, albeit in German, but the words "I'm going to kill Emmet Cole," are still uttered. While he's looking at AJ, Clark notices the monitor behind him that shows the befallen Rabbit.

Kurt rushes to the deck and comes face to face with killer. It's Hana. Only a thin piece of glass separates them as he stands in the navigation room. Unable to pull the trigger, he calls out to her and offers her help and asks her to just leave them alone. But any shred of humanity that was once there is no longer, and Kurt is forced to kill her.

But it's not over. Before she can even exhale a sigh of relief Tess is now ambushed by a second mutated beast! She claws for her life, trying to fight off her attacker, but she just isn't strong enough. Tess looks like she may meet the same end as Rabbit until a gunshot is fired that sends the beast flying off the table! Standing in the doorway, emerging from the shadows and carrying a rifle steps out the one and only, Emmet Cole. "How was my funeral?"