REPORT: A VIRUS AMONG US
FILE #: 107

IN JAROD’S LAIR, a cockroach is crawling along on a plate with the remnants of a half-eaten piece of cake on it. Jarod is watching the cockroach in fascination and curiosity. The roach continues crawling along the knife that’s lying on the plate, Jarod continues to stare at it.

HORACE GREELY HIGH SCHOOL, Portland, Oregon. Inside the school, a teenage boy is showing Miss Parker through a High School biology lab. The boy tells Miss Parker that it was Mr. Jarod’s classroom and that he did “the coolest experiments”. He says Jarod was especially interested in cockroaches. “He told us that roaches would be the only living thing after a biological holocaust. Them and some woman named Parker.” Miss Parker sees a petri dish with a pipette on top of it, standing on one of the lab benches. There’s a note on the dish, saying: ‘Drop a drop in the dish for your next clue.’ She does so and holds the petri dish up to her face, near her eyes when some kind of writing appears. When the dish almost touches her nose, she can read the writing. It says ‘You just gave yourself the flu. Jarod.’ She throws away the dish in disgust, it clatters to the floor.

IN A DIMLY LIT STAIRWAY of a residential building, a young boy is running down the stairs. He is chased by men in protective anti-contamination suits who are holding torches. Jarod, also clad in one of those suits, comes up from the opposite direction and catches the boy. He asks him where his father is. The boy tells him and the decontamination team enters a flat where a man is lying on the floor on a mattress, shivering. Jarod kneels down next to the man. He holds his hand, reassuring him that he’s going to be fine.

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS. Outside the building, police cars have assembled, their blinking lights still active. Jarod and Dr. Hoffman, a petite lady with curly blonde hair, walk along the street a few steps. Jarod tells Dr. Hoffman that the victim they found was suffering from micro-bacterial tuberculosis and that his son will be just fine, “Sure much better off than you’re gonna be, once Garber finds out what you did with the kid.” Dr. Garber arrives on the scene. Judging from his demeanor, he is angry at Jarod, who is being called Dr. Riley, for having violated quarantine procedure. He should have isolated the boy as well, but Dr. Hoffman takes Jarod’s side. Jarod tells Dr. Garber, “And the boy gets to be with his father now. I felt like he needed that.” Garber seems a little more relaxed now. “Great, our new guy is Florence Nightingale.”

IN A RUN-DOWN HOTEL somewhere in Chicago, Jarod and the hotel manager walk along a dark hotel corridor. They stop in front of one of the hotel doors. The manager informs Jarod about the price of the room and the modalities. He seems eager to have Jarod sign the papers quickly and very soon we find out why. Out of tune violin music starts playing from next door and when it stops, a baby starts crying. The hotel manager’s face sinks and he tells Jarod that there’s another hotel down the road, but Jarod looks optimistic. “I’ll take this place. It’s a lot nicer than where I used to live.”

THE CENTRE, Blue Cove, Delaware. Miss Parker walks along a hallway somewhere in the Centre. Sydney is standing in front of an elevator door. When he sees her, he walks up to her. Miss Parker sneezes and Sydney hands her a clean handkerchief from his pocket. She refuses, accusing him of being jealous because she went to Portland without him. He says that he’s confused, that he thought they were working together. “So did I,” she answers, “Until I discovered your personal ads all over the country, trying to contact Jarod. I don’t like secrets.” Broots joins them, telling them that ‘he’s’ in the lab. When Miss Parker asks who ‘he’ is, Broots tells her, “Mr. Raines.”

Miss Parker and Sydney enter the Sim Lab together. Mr. Raines can’t be seen by the camera, but his hand is toying with the replica of the Empire State Building Jarod made. His hand spins one of the metal struts on top of the building. When he starts to speak, his voice sounds very hoarse and his breathing shallow, more like a wheeze. “The Empire State Building. Who would have thought something so beautiful could be replicated by a four year-old boy in only two hours. Jarod was brilliant the day he got here, he was brilliant the day he escaped. The question is, where is he?” As he moves, the wheels of the oxygen tank from which a thin tube runs to his nose make a squeaking noise on the floor. Sydney and Miss Parker both seem intimidated and Miss Parker almost stammers, “Mr. Raines, Jarod has been harder to catch than we thought.” When Miss Parker has to sneeze again, Mr. Raines stares longingly at the cigarette she is holding. He asks her if he may take a draw from it. She looks at him, perplexed. “Mr. Raines, I have the flu.” He smiles back at her. “I’m dying.” She hands him the cigarette with the words, “Keep it.” He threatens her that if she doesn’t bring Jarod back where he belongs, he will get someone else to do it. When she says that her father wants her to do it, he answers, “Unlike everyone else around here, I’m not afraid of your father. I don’t have to be.”

REGIONAL INFECTIOUS DISEASE AUTHORITY LAB, Skokie, Illinois. The R.I.D.A. building is a modern white building. Inside, a door slides open and Jarod and Dr. Garber enter into some kind of hallway. They are both clad in green surgical scrubs, talking about how to contain viral outbreaks. Dr. Garber apologizes to Jarod that he was out of line earlier about the quarantine procedure. They are going on about Jarod’s impressive record and his qualifications, he seems like an able virologist. They approach a door with a keypad that only opens after Dr. Garber has entered the code. The door leads to a laboratory changing room where Jeff Baytos is changing out of his light blue anti-contamination suit. Garber introduces Jarod to Jeff, the decontamination and facility specialist. Jeff seems a little paranoid about coming into contact with anything possibly infectious and Garber tells Jarod that Jeff witnessed a man die of Ebola and has been reluctant to go past level two from then on. After having put on his anti-contamination suit, Dr. Garber walks into the next room, Jarod keeps staring at the left over suit that’s hanging next to the name ‘Jon Florence’ on the wall.

IN FRONT OF THE FLORENCE RESIDENCE, Jarod is standing, holding a notebook with a newspaper article that reads ‘R.I.D.A. Scientist Jon Florence Vanishes – No Foul Play Suspected – Car found abandoned, family left to wonder’ and has a photo of Jon Florence and his wife and daughter beneath it. Jarod closes the red notebook while watching from a distance how Mrs. Florence and her daughter Cindy carry shopping items from the trunk of the car to the house. A while later, Jarod is sitting in the garden of the Florence residence, talking to Mrs. Florence. She asks him if he knew Jon from work but Jarod says they never met. He tells her that he’s working under Walter Garber now, finishing the work his predecessor Jon started. Cindy, the little daughter, suddenly appears, thinking she had heard her father’s voice. Her mom tells her to go back into the house and lie down for her nap, saying it wasn’t her dad, just a friend. Jarod says hi, but she shyly retreats back to the house. Mrs. Florence seems uncomfortable, she is fiddling with her wedding band. When Jarod compliments that it’s a beautiful band, she tells him that it was Jon who designed it. “Now, I know it’s corny but he wanted them to be the only two alike in the world,” she adds and then walks over to some boxes stashed behind the house and hands Jarod a light brown jacket. “Here. Jon wore this when he went into the field to work. He never got sick wearing it. I’d like you to have it.” She says she is sure Jon would have wanted somebody who cared as much as he did to have it. As Jarod leaves, he tries on the jacket, it’s a little too small and the sleeves are much too short. Back at the R.I.D.A. lab, Jarod tries on Jon Florence’s anti-contamination suit. It fits perfectly.

INSIDE A SUPERMARKET, Jarod is sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of a shelf with cockroach-traps. A young clerk comes around the corner. Jarod takes a hand-sized cardboard box from the shelf, asking the clerk in utter curiosity, “It says here that this is a motel for… roaches?” The clerk looks a little perplexed. “Yeah, it’s like, uh, Hotel California for our little six-legged friends.” ‘Hotel California’ is another unknown territory for Jarod but he soon figures it out. “Oh! Like a trap?” he exclaims, “Well, that’s perfect. I’ll take 100.”

INSIDE JAROD’S HOTEL ROOM, we hear quite out of tune trumpet music. Jarod is sitting on the floor, a set of roach motels arrayed around him in a semi-circle. He sprinkles breadcrumbs on the floor to attract roaches. The utterly unprofessional sounding music plays on. Other residents are annoyed and yelling through the wall at the musician to stop playing. Jarod goes out of his room and knocks on the door next to his, the one where the horrible music is coming from. The man inside shouts at him to go away, but Jarod insists. “Sir, my name is Jarod. I’m your neighbor. I just wanted to tell you that I’m very intrigued by your music.” Ben Hansel, Jarod’s neighbor, is not “falling for that.” “I would very much like to meet you and I would like to ask you a question,” Jarod continues. Ben finally gives up, invites Jarod in and asks him if he can play an instrument. “I’ve conducted a symphony here and there,” Jarod replies. Ben, thinking Jarod knows his share about music, starts playing the trumpet again, asking his opinion. Jarod cocks his head. “That’s very interesting. Hayden’s cello concerto in C major, I believe.” Ben is very pleased that Jarod recognized it. Jarod asks him how long he’s been a musician and Ben tells him, fifteen odd years. He shows Jarod a newspaper advert, saying ‘Help wanted – Chicago Philharmonic Orchestra – Unique interpretations of classical pieces preferred’. Jarod learns that Ben sent them a tape a week ago and is now eagerly awaiting a positive response. But he hasn’t come to talk to Ben about music, he wanted to ask him if he’s got roaches. Ben casts Jarod an annoyed glance. “Roaches? I can’t get rid of them. I spilled a box of Crunchy Crawlers cereal behind the fridge once. Now, every night they come out hunting.” Thankful for the tip on how to capture his roaches, Jarod wants to leave, but Ben inquires about his trumpet piece again. “Now, I was wondering about my interpretation of the first movement. It was a tad subtle.” Jarod is trying to be polite, “Subtlety is a virtue in any form.” “A neighbor who’s a scholar of the arts and legends. Thank you, Jarod. You can yell at me through the wall any time.”

AT THE CENTRE, in Sydney’s office, Sydney enters, setting down a potted plant on his desk. He seems satisfied with the new position of the plant since he tells it, or rather himself, “You will do very nicely here.” He then spots a cardboard box on his desk with the following address on it: THE CENTRE, Psychogenic Research Dept., ATTH: Sydney, Blue Cove, DE 01991. When he opens it, he finds dozens of newspaper articles inside and a note in printed letters saying ‘YOUR LEGACY. LOVE, J.’ Sydney picks up some of the articles. ‘Tainted Water Poisons Town: 66 Dead’, ‘Gas Line Ignites: 25 Hurt’, ‘Chemical Explosion Kills 124’

AT THE R.I.D.A. FACILITY in a seminar room, Jarod, clad in a white lab coat, is showing slides of microscopic virus images. He is holding a talk in front of his doctor colleagues, none of which is paying any attention. Jarod recites his text on how quickly a level four virus can invade a host organism and how dangerous a level four situation can become. Still, no one is paying attention to him and his lecture. Jarod is annoyed and blurts out, “Gentlemen, you can ignore the flight attendant as she tries to teach you how to fasten a seat-belt, but with the Mutaba virus and other level fours, the kill rate is 90 percent.” Now that he’s finished, Jarod has the listeners’ attention and Dr. Garber thanks him for his safety review.

LATER, Jarod, Dr. Garber and Dr. Hoffman are changing into anti-contaminations suits in the lab’s changing room. Jarod starts focussing the conversation on Dr. Florence and that he finds it strange that Jon Florence, being a family man, would just leave without telling anybody. Dr. Garber denies Jarod’s suspicions by telling him that Jon Florence confided in him that “things at home weren’t… optimal. He never went into specifics but he certainly enjoyed working the extra hours here rather than being at home.” The trio proceeds to the containment lab, they start working with virus-infected tissue samples. Jarod reaches out with his hand to grab something when he accidentally cuts into his glove with a scalpel that’s lying on the table, there are blood stains around the cut. They all appear shocked and Dr. Garber quickly pushes the alarm button and ushers Jarod to the decon shower and into the slammer. The shower goes off, smoke descends on Jarod. Dr. Hoffman punches in her code to open the door to the slammer. Red lights blink, the computer announces ‘Code denied’. Dr. Garber takes over and enters his code. The door opens, they all rush into the slammer. Dr. Hoffman inoculates Jarod and he strips off the glove hastily and examines his hand and the glove under a magnifying glass. There are no injuries or skin breaks in Jarod’s hand and he concludes that the blood stains must have been from the sample. Everyone breathes a huge sigh of relief, the tension eases immediately. It soon becomes clear that this was only a simulation, that there was never any real danger. Garber tells them ‘well done’, that they’ll review the security tape the next day. He says to Jarod, “Well, you handled that simulation as if it were completely real, Jarod.” “Well, I’ve had a lot of practice, sir.” While Garber seems very satisfied, Dr. Hoffman is annoyed at the change of the slammer access code. Dr. Garber dismisses her concerns, “Lisa, the fewer people that have the code, the fewer people that are at risk. I don’t want anybody near the slammer unless they have to be.” Jarod finds it rather disturbing that Garber is the only person to have the access code to the slammer and the “submarine”, as they call their morgue. While Dr. Hoffman and Dr. Garber leave the slammer, Jarod turns his head, looking at the security camera that is fastened to the ceiling.

R.I.D.A. SECURITY TAPE STORAGE ROOM. The door opens and Jarod enters. There are stacks of video tapes, all labeled with a date, arranged neatly on shelves. Jarod goes through some of them until he has found the one he has been looking for. He takes it out of the shelf and puts it into the VCR that’s standing in one corner of the room. The tape shows a scene from the containment lab in black and white, at the left bottom corner we can read a date: 11/23. On the tape, Dr. Garber and Dr. Florence are changing into their anti-containment suits in the changing room. They are doing small talk about Jon’s daughter, who is, as it turns out, Dr. Garber’s God-daughter. Then they enter the lab and start working. Garber tells Florence that he’s been continuing with the autopsy and tells Jon to look at the liver under the microscope. He does so and is shocked to see that the liver has turned to mush. He concludes that the virus has mutated. Then there is a cut in the tape which is clearly visible due to the position of Dr. Florence suddenly shifting. Garber tells Florence that they’ll “finish this first thing Monday.” Jarod has recognized the cut too, but rewinds the security tape and checks again to make sure. He takes the video out of the VCR and studies the back of the device. He follows a white wire out of the room and downstairs to the R.I.D.A. Central Security Archives. Inside, he puts a zip disc into an external zip drive and enters ‘Biohazard Level 4 video storage’ into the files search engine on the computer. A list of dates appears. Jarod picks the one that says 11/23, copies the file onto the disc, takes it out when finished and leaves.

INSIDE A CHURCH, Sydney is kneeling in front of an array of candles. A priest walks past him and enters the confessional. Sydney crosses himself and follows the priest. He starts to confess his sins. “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. It’s been – oh my God – thirty-three years since my last confession. I have betrayed a friend.” The priest looks at him. “Then you must seek his forgiveness.” “He has shut me out.” When Sydney hesitates, the priest presses on. “You’re troubled by something else. Have you prayed to the Lord for forgiveness?” “Not even He can forgive me for what I’ve done.”

IN HIS LAIR, Jarod is sitting in front of his laptop, watching the security tape file. The video camera coverage replays the same scenario as described before, Dr. Garber and Dr. Florence are in the containment lab. The dialogue starts out exactly the same as on the other video tape Jarod already found. However, it is evident that the other copy had been tampered with since this video contains coverage that has been edited out of the “official” version. Dr. Garber shows Dr. Florence the liver sample and the latter is shocked that the virus has mutated. He tells Garber that he is going to put an end to his extremely dangerous viral experiments and that he won’t be a part of this Playing God game. Since Garber is afraid his projects are going to be exposed, he makes a decision that ends Dr. Florence’s life – he pulls at his air hose so that it disconnects from the helmet and Dr. Florence gets infected by the newly created airborne level five virus, for which no vaccine exists yet. Jarod lets the vital scene replay a couple of times before he watches Dr. Garber usher Dr. Florence under the decon shower and into the slammer.

AT THE R.I.D.A. FACILITY inside the morgue, Jarod enters in an anti-contamination suit and opens one of the drawers with a body inside, which is covered by a light gray cloth. Jarod lifts the cloth to look at the man’s face and is visibly disgusted by the sight. Apparently, the face is so deformed that Jarod can’t identify the body. He walks over to the other side and looks at the left hand, examining the wedding band. It is the same one Mrs. Florence wore, Jarod has finally found her husband, Jon Florence.

INSIDE JAROD’S HOTEL ROOM, he puts little heaps of Crunchy Crawlers in front of the roach motels that are still arranged in a semi-circle on the floor. From next door, there’s out of tune cello music playing.

IN BEN Hansel’S ROOM, Ben is playing the cello. Jarod is sitting opposite him, listening and knitting his brow in curiosity and puzzlement. There are again discontent shouts from next door, seemingly unimpressed by Ben’s musical escapades. When Ben has finished, he looks inquiringly at Jarod. The latter quizzically looks back at Ben and tells him, “Interesting interpretation.” But Ben’s face bears a resigned expression. He tells Jarod that he’s very polite but that he fears all the other neighbors are right: He is no great musician, his talent is nothing more than mediocre. Jarod has stood up and started wandering through the rather messy hotel room. He picks up a miniature model of a grand piano made out of wood, then sees more models of different instruments, made from different materials, arrayed on a table. When he asks Ben about them, he tells Jarod that he made them himself, but that they are just pointless exercises. Jarod, however, is fascinated by them. “Ben, these are exquisite.” “Your compliment is appreciated, Jarod, but… art it is not.” Jarod holds up a miniature grand piano out of glass. “Art is many things. Some choose a brush, some a bow, some a pen. And some… choose glass.”

IN JAROD’S LAIR, Jarod is sitting at his desk. A sign on his laptop monitor shows the words ‘Mail waiting’ revolving around a mailbox, accompanied by a bleeping sound. Jarod opens the new mail, it simply reads ‘Refuge’ in big letters.

FLASHBACK to an earlier time, Jarod is still a little kid at the age of about five, held at the Centre. In the Sim Lab, Young Jarod is holding a big ship’s steering wheel, turning it a little from side to side. He has electrodes fastened to his forehead. A younger version of Sydney is supervising Jarod’s simulation. Young Jarod is scared and he tells Sydney so. He starts screaming that people are burning and that he wants them to stop. He rips the electrodes from his forehead and runs out the room, yelling at Sydney to leave him alone and to make them stop. Sydney and some sweepers chase after the boy. One of the sweepers manages to catch Jarod and lifts him up in his arms. Sydney comes running towards them and looks Young Jarod in the eyes, telling him that he didn’t use the code word they came up with. The code word is ‘Refuge’ and if he uses it, it will make the sim stop. He gathers Jarod in his arms while the little boy whimpers that he wants his Dad. Sydney reminds Jarod again to say ‘Refuge’ when he wants to stop and Jarod nods and hugs Sydney, putting his head on Sydney’s shoulder.

BACK IN THE PRESENT, Jarod answers Sydney’s e-mail, typing: ‘Sydney, to find Refuge, go to…’. The rest of the text is not visible to the viewer.

THE CENTRE, Sydney’s office. Sydney is at the desk, when his computer signals him that he has got new mail. He opens the message, it is the one Jarod wrote. It reads ‘Sydney, to find Refuge, go to’.

IN A HALLWAY, Miss Parker is walking along with a cigarette in her mouth, holding a set of documents and reading them. Sydney is standing in front of an elevator door. When he sees Miss Parker, he walks up to her. She sneezes twice and coughs. Sydney tells her that Jarod has contacted him and that he doesn’t want to keep any secrets from her, concerning Jarod. When she asks him why he had such a sudden change of heart, he tells her, “Lately, I’ve been seeing things from another angle and maybe it’s best if you get him.” She snatches the sheet of paper that he had been holding in his hands and walks away.

IN THE R.I.D.A. CONTAINMENT LAB, Jarod examines samples he took of Jon Florence’s body. When looking though the microscope, he sees the image of a virus.

OUTSIDE THE R.I.D.A. BUILDING, Dr. Hoffman walks out the front door towards her car. A second later, Jarod emerges as well and catches up with her. She is just about to get into her car, but Jarod confronts her before she can enter. He shows her a folder and asks her opinion. She tells him that it looks like an advanced version of the Mutaba virus, worse than any level four virus she has ever seen. Jarod informs her that it’s not a level four, it’s a level five. At first she is reluctant to give away any information, but at Jarod’s gentle prodding, she tells him that Jon Florence knew Garber was doing secret experiments on some radical mutations of a level five virus. After some time, the research went awry and Jon Florence had planned to expose Garber’s research. When Jarod tells Dr. Hoffman that he found out Jon is dead, she is visibly shocked.

IN HIS LAIR, Jarod watches the manipulated security video tape again. Dr. Garber is showing Dr. Florence the mutated level five and we again see the shift in Dr. Florence’s position that makes the tampering with the video obvious.

IN A PUBLIC PARK, Jeff Baytos is cycling along on a bike, exercising. There’s a protective mouth-mask hanging loosely around his neck. Jarod watches as he descends from his bike and drinks some water from a public water faucet. Jarod walks up to him. “I’m guessing between the knob, the mouthpiece and the city water you’re drinking, there’s enough germs to kill a cockroach.” Baytos is startled by Jarod’s approach and is reluctant to talk to him, he takes his bike and starts to walk away. Jarod shouts after him, “It was an excellent performance, Jeff,” while he lifts a VHS tape for Baytos to see. That piques the his attention, but he denies knowing what Jarod is talking about. Jarod threatens him with enhancing the image so that he can recognize Baytos’s face. The latter sits down on a park bench and Jarod joins him. Baytos’s face has dropped, he seems guilt-ridden. “I watched a man beg for his life, beg to see his wife and kid again and I- I didn’t help him.” Jarod informs Baytos that he found Jon Florence in the submarine and that he knows he was infected with the virus. Baytos is convinced that it was his fault that Dr. Florence died, because the decon-shower didn’t work and it was his job to make sure it does. However, Jarod tells him that Jon Florence didn’t die because of him or the decon-shower, he died “because Walter Garber murdered him.”

ON THE SECURITY TAPE, the scene where Dr. Garber rips off Dr. Florence’s air hose replays again silently.

IN HIS LAIR, Jarod is holding a cockroach with a pair of tweezers and drops some colorless liquid on the roach. He collects the liquid that runs off the roach in a laboratory glass that already contains a reddish liquid substance. A series of scenes of Jarod’s activities follows.

Jarod is lying on his bed, the phone receiver to his ear, the phone in the other hand. He talks to a butcher and orders a dozen pig livers.

Jarod packs Ben’s miniature grand piano into a cardboard box which is addressed to the Chicago Philharmonic Orchestra.

In the R.I.D.A. Facility, Jarod opens a closet that contains a set of gas cylinders that are controlling the decon-shower pressure. He turns some of the levers on the gas cylinders.

In the containment lab, Jarod puts the sample of the virus he found on Jon Florence’s body under the microscope. He takes a photo of the microscopic image.

Jarod puts a few drops of sulfuric acid onto Walter Garber’s air hose so that the material starts to smoke and become porous.

In his lair, Jarod collects some of the sticky substance that looks a lot like glutinous honey from one of the bug motels with a knife and puts it into a jar that already contains a sizable amount of the substance.

In front of the camera that he put on his laptop, Jarod is sitting with a pair of glasses on, dressed in very conservative clothing. He speaks to the camera, “Good morning, class. Today’s lesson takes us into the fascinating world of… cockroaches.”

Jarod takes his phone and dials a number. Walter Garber answers and Jarod informs him that he thinks he’s found a vaccine for Mutaba. Garber says he’ll meet him at the lab in one hour.

IN THE CONTAINMENT LAB at the R.I.D.A. Facility, Jarod is showing Dr. Garber his findings. The latter is looking through the microscope at the image of the virus that Jarod had photographed earlier. Garber is shocked to see the exact mutated airborne virus he has been working with. He makes some panicky moves and suddenly his air hose, the one manipulated by Jarod, breaks, exposing Walter to the air in the containment lab. He immediately realizes the apparent danger of the situation and yells at Jarod to help him. Jarod hits the alarm button and alarms go off all over. They both run towards the shower and the slammer. When Dr. Garber is standing under the shower, it doesn’t work. Jarod tells him to better get into the slammer. Dr. Garber punches in his access code and enters the slammer – alone. The door closes behind him and Jarod suddenly emerges from an elevated level above the isolated room, leaning over a railing. Dr. Garber, in total panic, thinking he’s going to suffer from the same fate as Jon Florence, watches Jarod through the glass roof of the slammer as he is holding a syringe with a light brown-ish liquid. As he is walking along on the upper level like a cat watching its prey being held in a trap, Jarod’s face bears an expression of utter maliciousness. He waves the syringe around, telling Garber that it contains an anti-virus that will shut down the one Garber has been infected with. The latter whimpers and begs Jarod to give him the antidote. “Jarod, please, help me!” “Like you helped Jon Florence? By exposing him to a level five without any cure?” Garber insists that Dr.Florence’s death was an accident, but after a while he gets desperate and finally confesses that he killed him by exposing him to the virus. He begs Jarod again to give him the vaccine. “All right, Walter. But I will warn you, it’s only sugar water,” Jarod finally replies, smirking, “I don’t know how to make a vaccine. You see, I’m not really a virologist. The truth is, this place gives me the creeps.” Jarod leaves the level above the slammer and enters the security tape storage room where Jeff Baytos is watching the whole scene on the security camera. Over the camera, we can see that Garber is still raving and ranting, screaming for help. Baytos and Jarod both seem satisfied and when Baytos asks Jarod if he’s not going to tell Garber that he wasn’t really infected with a virus, Jarod tells him to do so – but only in 48 hours after Jarod has made sure the police get the security tape of Garber’s confession.

JAROD’S HOTEL. Miss Parker, Sam and another sweeper enter Jarod’s hotel room, guns drawn. Sam complains about the horrible smell, but Miss Parker’s nose is blocked because of her flu. Jarod’s computer starts beeping. A message is blinking on the screen, saying ‘Press any key’. She does and a film starts showing. It’s the one Jarod had been recording earlier, showing him with glasses, teacher-style. “Good morning, class. Today’s lesson takes us into the fascinating world of … cockroaches.” Jarod has apparently left the hotel room in time. Miss Parker picks up one of the bug motels and holds it up. There’s a yellow post-it note fastened to it, reading ‘THE CENTRE’. A couple of dead roaches fall from the bug motel to the floor. She drops the cardboard trap in disgust. On the film, Jarod is rambling on. “This is a bug motel.” He holds one up. “When the hormones of a roach’s body,” He holds up the laboratory glass with the reddish liquid in it, “Which is the wet stuff you just walked through, combines with the sticky stuff inside of the box, which you are standing in,” He puts the bug motel and the glass close together, “It forms a bond. Welcome to the world’s largest bug motel. Enjoy your stay. Class dismissed.” When Miss Parker and Sam want to move, they find themselves stuck to the floor with their shoes.

IN A BAR OR LOUNGE SOMEWHERE, Sydney is sitting at the bar, Jarod is pretending to be a bar keeper, having arranged this secret meeting with Sydney. It becomes apparent that Sydney’s earlier action of telling Miss Parker Jarod contacted him was only a bait to lure Miss Parker into one of Jarod’s traps, so that Sydney and Jarod could meet undetected. Sydney looks at Jarod, his face bearing a painful expression. “I have to ask you for something.” “You’re in no position to ask me for anything.” “Not even your forgiveness?” “What?” “For keeping you in The Centre? The lies all these years?” He shows Jarod the box with all the newspaper articles, asking Jarod if he left it for him to find. Jarod looks surprised and tells Sydney that it wasn’t him who left it. Sydney figures that it must have been left by Miss Parker then. Jarod looks at Sydney and answers his question. “You want my forgiveness? Then tell me what happened to my Mom and Dad.” “I can’t. I don’t know the truth.” “Then you and The Centre will never get me back. And I can’t forgive you, Sydney. I can’t forgive myself.”

IN BEN HANSEL’S ROOM, the phone rings, Ben answers it, wiping shaving foam from his cheek. It’s the Chicago Philharmonic, who tell him that they received his glass sculpture and that they’d like him to make an appointment with their merchandise coordinator.

OUTSIDE THE FLORENCE RESIDENCE, Jarod hands Mrs. Florence her husband’s wedding band. She thanks him for everything. When she asks him where he’ll go now, Jarod answers that he’ll be starting a new job.

SOMEWHERE IN A PRIVATE RESIDENCE, there is a ring at the door. A woman walks over to answer it. Outside, there is a man with an orange jump-suit and a baseball cap on, his back turned to the woman. He turns around to face her and we see that it is Jarod, working as an exterminator. “You got roaches?” he asks her.