by special arrangement
Musical accompaniment available when a
Beatnik Plug-in is installed.
Part I
000. Main title sequence. Credits appear superimposed over the following clips. They are a mix of old TV footage and new film footage with the same look so that the impression is one of being filled in on other events that also happened in the past.
001. OLD SCENE: Catherine Chandler, being interrogated at Gabriel's headquarters. One man questions her, telling her that all they want is the book, and then she can go. She blinks in the light, saying nothing.
002. OLD/NEW MIX: Two junior officers hold Catherine down. One of them is a John LaGuizamo type; slick, handsome dark haired and eyed Italian street hustler, now working in the big time. His name is Derrick Donello. As the questioning goes on he appreciates her courage even while being frustrated that she won't talk.
003. OLD SCENE: Later. Dr. Brown administers some dangerous combination of drugs to Catherine in an effort to force her to talk. They want to know where the book Joe Maxwell gave her is. She won't talk.
004. OLD SCENE: Later. Dr. Brown, in examining Catherine, discovers she's pregnant and the nature of the pregnancy is out of the ordinary. Gabriel becomes interested in the baby and Catherine is kept in long term confinement.
005. OLD/NEW MIX: Derrick Donello is one of the guards who watch over Catherine and take her from room to room in the complex. He is present at the door when Gabriel discusses how important the baby is with Dr. Brown.
006. OLD/NEW MIX: Donello is watching the monitors the night Vincent breaks in and mauls several of the guards. He sees the beast's power even as he hits the button to call Gabriel.
007. NEW SCENE: After they have moved to Gabriel's high rise headquarters. Derrick at the monitors. Gabriel's hand claws hard into his shoulder. Derrick freezes. Gabriel's usual soft menacing voice.
GABRIEL
Now how do you feel about that kind of power?
DERRICK
What um... what power, Sir?
GABRIEL
You've seen him. Seen the beast. What do you feel when you think of him?
DERRICK
He's amazing. Frightening... such power...
Donello is equally frightened by Gabriel. Nervous. Not sure of what he wants to hear, or why he's picked him out to ask. Gabriel smiles, leans down sharing a confidence near his ear.
GABRIEL
But you already know it. That power is my brother. Suckled on blood, and weaned on rage, we are as alike inside, as we are different outside.
Gabriel punches a button showing Catherine pacing in her sterile white room in her sterile white gown. Derrick, wisely, says nothing unless asked a direct question. Gabriel plays with his ring and talks.
Look at her. Somehow, that woman gave herself, body and soul, to that power. Can you even imagine what it would be like to go into the embrace of the beast, to surrender everything to that kind of power?
Donello shakes his head no. Gabriel smiles again. He comes close, pulls Donello's head back by the hair and whispers in the young man's ear.
But... haven't you already known it? That awful power? On the streets? In the dark alleys, at the hands of those who used you before I bought you and brought you up here into the light?
Gabriel hangs over the young man, invoking a feeling of what he may have done to the boy himself. Donello is sweating, fully aware of Gabriel's power over him. What the man is really asking Donello is "Haven't you been more afraid of me"? Donello understands the question. He whispers.
DERRICK
Yes.....
Gabriel lets him go, instantly changing the subject, but he liked that answer. Walks away, hand in his pocket.
GABRIEL
The child the woman carries came of that power. Something you must understand, and never dare let yourself forget it. That child is divine. A demigod, come of an elemental power of earth and fire, wrought on the body of a mortal woman. It will be of a greatness not seen since the age of Alexander. They say the infant Hercules strangled two serpents in his cradle. You will never fathom it. Never delve its complexity. But you will see its power and learn through scars, the ecstasy of submission to it. Do you understand at all what it is to serve a being of such power?
Donello looks into Gabriel's eyes. He already knows. It's terrifying, but rather like being hypnotized.
To serve him throughout your life? Stand at his shoulder when he comes into his power, and be part of it? Are you worthy, Derrick? Can you make yourself worthy of such a thing without dying for it?
If Gabriel told him to walk off the penthouse roof, he would. He swallows, nods, aware that Gabriel is considering him to be the child's bodyguard.
008. OLD/NEW MIX: In the following days Donello watches Catherine in awe, terribly aware of how special the child growing inside her is, a thousand questions in his mind that he can't ask. She is deeply sad, desperate, but not broken. She still refuses to talk.
009. NEW SCENE: One night, as Catherine sleeps a troubled sleep, Donello stands over her. He's thinking hard about Gabriel's words. He licks his lips, slowly pulling back the covers to her hips. She doesn't move. He gingerly touches her belly.
Without waking, she feels the hand and her fingers close on his as if holding on for dear life. It startles him. He jerks his hand back. She feels it taken from her and turns her head on the pillow, tears running silently down her cheeks. Donello looks down at her.
There is something about her that makes him want her as a means to breaking her. He is only about 19, but has been a victim too many times himself to feel any pity. He feels only the heady arousal that the thought of taking her, especially in her pregnant condition, brings. The cruelty of it doesn't occur to him, and wouldn't bother him if it did.
010. OLD/NEW MIX: In the drug lab Dr. Brown is working with morphine and other chemicals. He shows the chemists something. Donello and another guard arrive.
DERRICK
The car's here, doctor. Ready to go?
DR.BROWN
In a minute.
Brown puts several samples in a case. Speaks to the chemists.
I'll send you a report in a few days.
Then Brown and the guards go out.
011. OLD/NEW MIX: Donello is the guard on duty in the examining room the day Catherine is forced to unbutton her gown and lie exposed on the doctor's table. He does not look away. Instead, Catherine does, having read his eyes correctly. He's getting vicarious kicks out of watching her being humiliated and emotionally tortured.
The oriental nurse hands him a note. Catherine wrote it and tried to get the nurse to carry it outside for her. Donello, looking right at Catherine and enjoying the look of despair that comes into her eyes, opens his pocket watch and slips her pathetic plea into it as if it gives him some special power over her.
012. OLD SCENE: Time has passed. In Gabriel's delivery room, Catherine has had the baby. It has been taken from her. Dr. Brown stands over her with the deadly syringe poised. They are alone. He promises her she will not suffer. Her eyes widen in horror. He injects her. In his haste he rips her arm painfully. He goes out, leaving her to her fate.
Dr. Brown, in his haste, has picked up one of the experimental drug mixtures he was working with. The morphine he intended to inject her with was laced with everything under the sun.
She feels the drugs working through her almost at once. She expects it to knock her out. Instead she slips into a hazy somnambulistic state.
013. OLD/NEW MIX: Donello is with Gabriel and Dr. Brown, as they and the nurse holding the baby get into the helicopter. It begins to rise. He sees Gabriel's intent gaze of open admiration and looks out to see Vincent roaring below them. He shudders.
014. OLD SCENE: Vincent hears his name and turns. It is Catherine. In her drug induced state she feels no physical pain except the horror of knowing that she is dying.
The final moments of her existence have rendered themselves down to a primal desire to reach her child. With her last strength she has followed them all the way to the roof, but there her legs give out. She collapses in Vincent's arms, the drugs working their way through her system, paralysis setting in, interrupting her breathing.
She tells him about the child, sees the uncomprehending wonder on his face, a pang of grief passes across her face that he does not remember the only time they ever had together.
She tries to prepare him for losing her, all the while feeling the shut-down of her dying body. Several times she tries to speak, but only a rush of air leaves her collapsing lungs as the paralysis reaches for her vocal cords. So many things to tell him and her voice failing, she remembers the poem he had tried so desperately to give her when his madness almost engulfed him. She touches his face. It is so difficult to get the words out and she must. She whispers.
CATHERINE
"Though lovers be lost....."
She cannot complete the line. Feels herself fading. Too late. Everything is too late. She wills him to understand with all her being, looking intently into his eyes. He has forgotten so much. He must remember this. Must believe this truth, for if he doesn't- He answers at once.
VINCENT
"Love shall not....."
Her head falls back so sharply it is as if his speaking has taken her life. He understands. She knows Vincent. He will find their child. She has no choice but to leave it in his hands. She can no longer hold her head up or her eyes open. Lying limp in his arms she feels him pull her close but can't respond. The last thing in her fading mind is his soft voice whispering in her ear.
VINCENT
"And death shall have no dominion."
It echoes. The drug mixture completes its trip through her bloodstream and into her brain. She loses consciousness, going limp. Her body spirals down toward deep coma. Her blood pressure plummets, lungs collapse as breathing ceases, her heartbeat stops. Then, make no mistake about it, CATHERINE CHANDLER DIES.
015. OLD SCENE: Vincent takes her home. The night is cold, about 30 degrees. His breath shows in the air. The walk is long. Her body temperature begins to fall. He reaches her apartment building and takes her up through the service elevator shaft, onto her balcony, forcing the door.
He has brought her home, puts her on her own bed, stays with her until dawn, while her color pales and her body cools. Finally he has to go. He kisses her cold lips and leaves her, uncovered, in an apartment without heat.
She lies there in the cold, for 48 hours before her body is found. By then she has descended into deep cortex mastronoma.
016. OLD SCENES: Joe Maxwell emerges from the elevator, his grieving eyes flinch at the moving cops, the forensics team. All the tests that can be performed on the site show death.
Catherine is pronounced, tagged and bagged by the medical examiner.
017. NEW SCENE: Catherine's body is removed to cold storage where it drops to just above freezing. It is another 48 hours before it is removed from the morgue vault and taken to an autopsy room.
018. NEW SCENE: Dr. David McHenry, assistant medical examiner, Michael Biehn type; a young man with very serious aspect, rumpled clothes, tousled hair, sensible shoes, glasses, handsome, but preoccupied. Work oriented. Today is business as usual.
He looks at a chart, breaks the police seal and unzips the body bag.
Catherine is still, blue, and nude, though his shoulder blocks the camera's view of her body. His eye runs over the body professionally, he obviously doesn't know her, then he covers her with a sheet.
Brushing the hair back from her face he notices the scar forward of her left ear. He bends close to examine it under a magnifying glass.
As he straightens, he notices her beauty for the first time. It is only momentary.
019. He snaps on a microphone suspended above the table, glances at the form on his clip board, and speaks into it.
DAVID McHENRY
This is case number 317537, Catherine Chandler. The subject is a Caucasian female in her early thirties, brown hair, blue eyes. The body is 63 inches long, weighing 132 pounds, showing signs of aggravated stress, and recent pain trauma. Slightly under-nourished. External examination, part one: Identifying marks. Left forearm shows a badly ripped puncture wound consistent with forceful introduction of a hypodermic syringe. There is a vertical scar measuring three inches just forward of the subject's left ear. It appears to be from a slash, fully healed, perhaps three years old...
Dr. Marks, forensic pathologist, enters with Diana Bennett behind him.
DR.MARKS
This one's going to get grisly, Lt. Bennett, the DA wants full legal-medical.
DIANA
I've seen autopsies before.
DR.MARKS
Okay. Diana Bennett, special crimes; David McHenry, one of our assistant examiners. Dr. McHenry, Lt. Bennett.
David and Diana nod and murmur greetings, as Diana is putting on a mask and preoccupied with looking down into Catherine's face for the first time.
Dr. Marks pauses when he sees the body, shaken.
DIANA
Something wrong, doctor?
DR.MARKS
No, I just hadn't connected Chandler's name to that face. I knew her somewhat. Worked with her on several occasions.
Marks gets to work, examining, and speaks into the mike.
Rigor mortis absent in extremities, face and neck. Body temperature consistent with that of the room, skin is of normal texture.
They work along. The external autopsy goes routinely, skin and nail samples, samples from under the nails, hair, blood and tissue samples. No external marks except a puncture wound in the left arm that is ripped. Marks begins work on the pelvic examination.
020. NEW SCENE: Dr. Marks, working about the pelvic region, still on the external examination. Looking down he draws a breath. Softly.
DR.MARKS
My God...
DIANA
What is it?
Dr. Marks looks again, feeling for something out of frame, then hesitantly speaks into the microphone.
DR.MARKS
Distention of the abdominal wall with apparent retention of the placenta lead to the conclusion that the subject was delivered of a baby within moments of death.
DIANA
Are you sure?
DR.MARKS
I'm absolutely certain. Five minutes from delivery to death maximum. She didn't even have time to expel the placenta. I'm going to need an obstetrics kit. We could learn a lot here. David, are your hands full?
David is in the process of moving a transparent sliver of material onto a slide.
DAVID McHENRY
Afraid so.
DR.MARKS
I'll get it. Damn, what a development.
Diana's mind works, coupling what she knows about Catherine with the new information. As Marks leaves Diana goes with him. She has something in mind and needs to talk to Joe Maxwell.
021. Left alone for a moment, McHenry snatches up Catherine's hand and looks at the fingernails' fibrous growth. As Marks returns with the instruments he hastily slaps the magnifying lens away. He does not want Marks to know what he's found.
022. Marks begins the stomach incision, then stops. He tries to start again, stops.
DAVID McHENRY
What's wrong?
DR.MARKS
You haven't been here long, David, you didn't know her, but everybody liked her. I liked her. She was with the DA but she had the same kind of guts you find in street cops. It's getting to me a little.
David shrugs.
DAVID McHENRY
Want me to finish for you?
DR.MARKS
I don't know...
DAVID McHENRY
Better than having your hand shake and botching something they're going to need in court. You can sign it later. Who's going to know?
DR.MARKS
Well, you have a point. Okay. Thanks.
Dr. Marks leaves, looking like he may throw up or break down.
023. McHenry works steadily until he notices something. He gets a cuticle pusher and looks at the base of her nail bed under the big magnifier. He works on. A hair under his microscope shows something. He runs quick spectro-analysis on blood and tissue samples. Speaks to the microphone.
DAVID McHENRY
There is a thin sliver of spongy post-mortal growth at the base of the finger nail bed. Fibrous post-mortal hair growth at the roots. Spectro-analysis shows the presence of other elements besides morphine in blood and tissues. There is a stunning variety.
He looks at Catherine's face, his voice losing the professional tone.
Catherine Chandler... what did you get yourself in the way of?
Impulsively he does a brain wave scan. It flatlines. Disappointed, he looks at what he's found, touches her cheek, thinking. He takes in the arch of her throat, the softness of her lips. His touch becomes a caress along her cold cheek. Something comes into his mind. It seems to frighten him. He hangs on the edge for a moment.
024. Then he makes a decision. Burst of action. He pockets the tape he and Marks have been talking into. Then he lifts Catherine back onto the gurney, covers her, moves her into a small elevator directly off the autopsy room, and takes her down to the sub-basement level where his own lab is.
025. NEW SCENE: McHenry's lab. It's small, cluttered, obviously carved out of what used to be a storage space, probably on his own time. There are supply closets, exposed air ducts, pipes. A home-built Faraday cage with scrounged instruments. A work bench with soldering tools and parts. It doesn't look all that different from the purposeful clutter of Mouse's workshop Below.
An autopsy table, cabinets, counter and sinks in a deep alcove with large folding doors. It's McHenry's little cubby to pursue his own experiments in.
McHenry carefully puts a burr hole through Catherine's skull to reach the brain. Then, working with practiced skill, he inserts a thin hollow probe into the minute channel. Then, carefully, he introduces a sterile gold filament wire through the probe into her deep cerebral cortex.
He goes to a piece of customized equipment, not a brain wave scanner, something designed purely to register the presence of minute amounts of electro-chemical exchange on a synaptic level. He turns it on and connects the filament to a sensor. Waits. Nothing. Frustrated, he adjusts the delicate calibration and waits.
Then a tiny sync pulse blips across the screen. He is elated. He whispers.
DAVID McHENRY
I knew it!
026. Feverishly he hooks up life support, warming blanket, I.V. feeds to both arms and respiratory support. Catherine's chest begins to rise and fall again. He tries conventional brain wave again. Flatline. He hooks up a heart monitor, gets out the paddles, greases them, pulls back the sheet and applies them to her chest, his shoulder blocking the shot. He trips the current. Catherine's body bucks with it, but the heart monitor still flatlines.
027. NEW SCENE: Below, in his chamber, Vincent sits staring intently into the middle distance.
VINCENT (vo)
"Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul of the wide world, dreaming on things to come, can yet the lease of my true love control, suppos'd as forfeit to a confin'd doom....."
He is trying to couple simple thoughts together. He is at home, in his chamber. Catherine is in the world Above, dead.
VINCENT (vo)
"The mortal moon hath her eclipse endur'd, and the sad augurs mock their own presage....."
It is as if he dreamed her. As if they had never met. He cannot withstand it.
After all the long months of searching and hoping. He tries to believe she's dead. He tries to imagine life without her. He can do neither.
VINCENT (vo)
"Incertainties now crown themselves assur'd, and peace proclaims olives of endless age."
He is holding a water tumbler in his hands, sipping plain water from it slowly. Without apparent thought or effort he crushes it, not seeming to feel the blood on his hands, dropping the pieces on the glassy, wet surface of the table before him. It reflects him. He does not sob, he is too far gone. Only his eyes won't stop leaking tears down his face.
028. NEW SCENE: In the lab, McHenry adjusts the dials,
charges the paddles. He places them against Catherine's chest again and applies current. Again, her body bucks but the heart monitor remains silent. He is really talking to her now, trying to reach her.
DAVID McHENRY
Help me. There's no cell deterioration, you've got to be in there somewhere. I'm trying to bring you back. Cathy, I'm David. You don't know me yet, but you will. Please... work with me...
029. NEW SCENE: Below Vincent picks up a piece of the jagged glass, his small slow movements in stark contrast to McHenry's fevered efforts. He looks at it, tears still tracking down his face. He holds it up. It sparkles in the candle light like Catherine's crystal, like his tears, almost beckoning.
It seems to draw him. In this blackest midnight of the soul it seems to make sense. He is very remote, almost standing outside himself watching what he does like a stranger, and he is perhaps not the only shadow watching there. He has not had time to come to terms with anything. His grief is crushing.
VINCENT (vo)
"Now, with the drops of this most balmy time, my love looks fresh, and death to me subscribes, since, spite of him, I'll live in this poor rhyme, while he insults o'er dull and speechless tribes:....."
He rips back the sleeve over his left arm, exposing it to the bicep. His velvet skin is not as finely furred on the inside as it is on the outside. His veins show clearly.
030. NEW SCENE: McHenry tries again. He applies the paddles. Catherine's still body bucks, but the monitor still flatlines. McHenry pounds on the equipment. To himself.
DAVID McHENRY
There IS a sync pulse! There is still synaptic electro-chemical exchange in the deep cortex! Cathy, there is! You're in there, I'm not imagining it!
He works feverishly, attaching an external pacemaker through her chest wall.
031. NEW SCENE: Below, Vincent watches the glass shard sparkle. It fascinates him. Slowly he drops the glass shard to his arm. It sparkles against his velvet skin, denting it. Without looking down, he draws the glass shard deeply across his arm at the elbow joint, cutting into a main artery. The blood seeps, running down his arm, then spurts out with amazing force as the artery splits. The chamber is so dark that the blood lacks any bright color. It looks almost black, like wine. His face registers nothing at all but black despair. He will join Catherine in death. There is nothing else for him.
VINCENT (vo)
"And thou in this shalt find thy monument, when tyrants' crests and tombs of brass are spent."
032. NEW SCENE: McHenry attaches leads to a power strip. He adjusts the current. Mumbling to himself.
DAVID McHENRY
Be careful... just don't do anything stupid... and don't do too much... there's no second chance if you botch it...
But at the same time knowing she has no other hope. He checks the dials, telling her to hang on.
This is going to be a little rough, I'm sorry. Just... trust me and hang on...
He greases the paddles again.
033. NEW SCENE: Below Vincent sits in his chair, his arm hanging straight down at his side, dark blood pouring down his arm into a large and spreading pool on the floor. There is an alarming amount of it. It forms a glassy surface. It reflects him as the table top does, lit by candle light in his chair. He's getting woozy. He whispers.
VINCENT
Catherine..... where are you? Where is the light?
034. NEW SCENE: McHenry applies the paddles again, holding the current on, begging Catherine.
DAVID McHENRY
Come back, please come back...
Catherine's body bucks and arcs hard while the current holds. He lets it off, charges and shocks her again. Her body bucks with it sharply.
035. NEW SCENE: Vincent's eyes close, his head dropping back against the chair, whispering again.
VINCENT
Where is the light?
Slowly he lets out his breath.
036. NEW SCENE: McHenry lets off the current. Catherine's body goes limp again. A moment of silence. McHenry's head droops. He has done all he can. He is defeated.
037. NEW SCENE: Vincent wavers on the very edge of unconsciousness. Willing for it to happen, but where is the light? Where is Catherine? On the wall, hovering over him, one of the many shadows may or may not be that of a woman.
038. NEW SCENE: McHenry drops his head into his hands, weeping. For a long moment there is nothing, then, suddenly, a strong heart beat thuds.
039. NEW SCENE: Vincent jolts in his chair. His eyes spring open in shock.
040. NEW SCENE: The heart-beat thuds twice.
041. OLD SCENE: Vincent flashes on the moment of leave taking in Catherine's apartment. He hears himself.
VINCENT (vo)
While I live, you live.
It echoes in his head.
While I live, you live. In me. Always.
042. NEW SCENE: In the lab McHenry hears the heart monitor before he looks up. It registers a heartbeat, slow, but steady. McHenry almost shouts with relief. Looking down into her face. Gently.
DAVID McHENRY
Yes. Heartbeat slow... but steady. That's all right, the pacemaker's working. You're just down in fluids... it's hard for your heart to pump the thickened blood. Don't worry, the fluids I'm giving you will fix that soon enough.
Catherine still looks very limp but for the rising and falling chest. It's weird hearing him address her as if she's alive. He springs back to work.
043. NEW SCENE: Vincent whispers to himself.
VINCENT
While I live..... you live...
He shakes his head.
While I live.....
With great effort, he tries to bend his blood covered arm, stop the blood. He hasn't the strength left.
While I live.....
He has passed the moment of crisis now. He wants to live, if only because if he dies, so does what is left of Catherine inside him. He reaches across and hauls his bleeding arm up with his other hand.
While I live...
As Father appears in the doorway, sees the blood and cries out, rushing to him.
FATHER
Vincent!!