Joe and Aguirre view Level Two, which is operating smoothly to Joe’s relief. Aguirre asks whether Bishop’s attack on the orderly was intentional. Joe dismisses it as a random accident caused by the orderly not following protocol and argues that chronic understaffing forces employees to take shortcuts. Aguirre counters that security-cleared staff are expensive and difficult to acquire.

At Bishop’s freshly cleaned cell, the Antenna suddenly has a violent outburst, screaming and clawing at the padded wall, which briefly startles Aguirre. He then notices homemade nameplates on the chamber doors bearing names from a movie: Bishop, Hicks, Frost, and Vasquez. As Joe struggles to explain the prohibited practice, Hannah emerges from treating another Antenna. She takes responsibility, explaining that the names are practical tools that help staff communicate about patient care and distinguish between otherwise identical subjects. Aguirre says he will not include the nameplates in his report but orders them removed before the next inspection. He also offers to relay Hannah’s reasoning to headquarters to potentially change the policy.

Bishop appears to lock eyes with the men and grins. Aguirre requests a tuning session using Bishop. As Aguirre reviews his tablet, Joe glimpses a file photo showing Bishop before her current state: a healthy woman in her forties with black, shoulder-length hair. This matches Riley’s description of the woman she saw, but Joe dismisses this as a coincidence.

Riley sits in the corner of the kitchen, having stayed awake all night, clutching a large carving knife for protection. Her extreme exhaustion causes sensory distortion and lag, which she compares to a past experience of getting high for the first time. She recalls lying to her mother about that incident and feels guilty that the lie can never be undone.

Riley tries to convince herself that the black-haired woman is merely a hallucination brought on by grief and stress over her mother’s death by suicide and a representation of subconscious resentment toward her mother. After Joe leaves for work, Riley decides she must get out of the house. She makes her way to the front door, knife in hand, expecting an ambush at every corner. She throws the door open and finds nothing but a beautiful, sunny morning. Relieved, she slams the door behind her and runs down the driveway.

Joe leads Aguirre into the control room and introduces him to Chuck, the control operator, and Tariq, a young chemical specialist. When Aguirre asks about Bishop’s usage rate, Chuck reports she has had 71 tunings, significantly more than others. Joe explains Bishop is used most because she is the most effective, and her skills improve with each tuning, creating a self-reinforcing cycle. Aguirre decides to proceed with Bishop to push her limits. On the monitors, orderlies restrain Bishop in a wheelchair; though she was screaming moments before, she gives no sign of awareness during the process.

Joe excuses himself to supervise the setup on Level Two. There, he reflects on his career path, recalling how he worked long hours to secure the supervisor position, missing much of Riley’s childhood in the process. He finds Hannah, who bluntly tells him tuning Bishop again so soon is dangerous. Joe explains it was Aguirre’s request, and they just need to get through the inspection.

Joe confides to Hannah that Riley is experiencing vivid hallucinations of a woman in a hospital gown clawing her own face. He worries that seeking official psychological help will result in Riley being red flagged by the Company, especially since the hallucinations might stem from Riley having glimpsed his classified work files as a young child. He persuades a reluctant Hannah to visit that evening to assess Riley. Medics prop Bishop’s eyelids open with hooks, completing the tuning setup. As Joe turns to leave, he sees Bishop’s eyes stop roaming and stare directly at him.

Riley walks several miles from her father’s isolated house into town. Exhausted, disoriented, and paranoid, she constantly scans her surroundings for the woman from her visions.

As Riley reaches the town and is surrounded by other people, her fear begins to dissipate. The adrenaline that has been sustaining her fades, replaced by overwhelming weariness that makes each step more difficult. She enters a public park with a large, open grassy field where few places exist for threats to hide. Riley walks to the center of the field and collapses onto the grass, curling into a ball. She feels safe and comfortable for the first time in hours. In the fleeting moment between wakefulness and sleep, she recalls happy memories with her mother. Riley smiles, convinced she has imagined the terrifying visions and that such monsters are never real.

The tuning session for Antenna-201 begins, focusing on a target named Victor Aminov. Bishop is subjected to a chaotic barrage of images and sounds related to Aminov: photographs spanning his entire life, recordings of his voice speaking Ukrainian, maps, documents, and his personal information. The stimuli flash and pulse at intense speeds designed to overwhelm human perception. The recorded name Victor Aminov repeats at varying frequencies.

The intense stimulation makes Aguirre physically ill, though he refuses to look away. Hannah warns that Bishop’s vital signs are exceeding safe levels, but at Aguirre’s fascinated insistence, Joe orders the team to increase the sensory input. As Bishop’s awareness rises from 25% to 34%, her screams of pain intensify until she releases a scream of pure fury and pulls against her restraints. The bindings loosen slightly, giving her just enough slack to lean forward into the hooks propping her eyelids open. She gouges out her own eyes, splattering blood onto the equipment.

Staff rush in to restrain Bishop and tend to her injuries. After cutting the stimulation and switching the cell to night vision, Joe begins the linkage protocol, repeatedly asking Bishop if she can see. Eventually, Bishop confirms she can and begins relaying intelligence from Aminov’s perspective, interspersed with pleas for the pain to stop. She describes being in a truck traveling through rural terrain with goats, likely in Turkey, according to Aguirre, and recites a phone number she hears. Joe instructs her to report every detail, promising the pain will only stop when she is finished. Bishop begins speaking a continuous, mumbled stream of information that is recorded and transmitted to headquarters for analysis.

Riley awakens in the park to find the park completely silent and deserted. She senses the woman’s presence and sits up to see the black-haired apparition standing 50 yards away near the empty playground. The woman’s head is bowed, her body twitching unnaturally.

In a whispered exchange that carries across the field, the woman explains that she was kept in darkness by unknown captors who subjected her to blinding light and deafening sound, sending her mind across the world. The torture caused her to lose her memory and identity. She trained herself to listen to her captors’ conversations and learned a name. She then searched until she found him and discovered his weakness: Riley.

The woman raises her head, revealing bloody, gouged eye sockets, and declares she wants them all to feel pain. She lunges at Riley, screaming. Riley pulls her knife out and slashes at the apparition. The hallucination shatters, and Riley suddenly finds herself standing in the middle of a soccer field, swinging the knife at a terrified team of 12-year-old girls and their coach. The screams Riley hears now are those of the children, not the woman. A police officer arrives, draws his weapon, and orders Riley to drop the knife. She complies and collapses onto the grass, sobbing.

In Joe’s office, Aguirre deflects responsibility for pushing Bishop too far, noting it was Joe’s call as supervisor. He suggests that Bishop’s self-blinding presents a research opportunity. Aguirre speculates they could create specialist Antennas by intentionally removing certain senses to enhance others and even train subjects while they are still conscious before inducing the vegetative state. Joe is disturbed by the idea and tells Aguirre his staff would object to such practices.

Joe receives a frantic phone call from Riley. She tells him the police brought her home after the park incident. She is terrified by the continuing visions and fears that she will harm herself and end up like her mother. Realizing Aguirre is listening, Joe lies that his dog ran away and he must leave to retrieve it.

After leaving his office, Joe goes to the control room. Chuck reports an anomaly in the intercepts: a period when Bishop’s speech was crystal clear, and she seemed to be having a conversation, saying she did not remember and referring to being in darkness. Joe asks Chuck to log a research request under the current case file for all recent information on Katherine Gerhard, including emails, phone records, and crime scene reports, saying he needs to understand why she died by suicide. When Chuck refuses, Joe pressures him by alluding to a past incident where Chuck used Facility resources to spy on his own ex-wife. Chuck reluctantly agrees to retrieve the files that night.