View of a girl (Edith as a child) swimming in the ocean. Her head and part of her bare shoulders are visible above the water.

CAPTION (Edith thinking): Ever since I was a little girl I wanted to plunge into the ocean.

View of a stretch of beach. A girl’s one-piece bathing suit lies discarded on it just where the waves are lapping on the shore.

CAPTION (Edith thinking): I wanted it so much I engaged in some behavior condemned as inappropriate.

View of Edith, perhaps a little younger looking than she was as a professor, in a white lab smock, wearing a face shield and surgical gloves. An octopus of some kind, partially dissected, sits in a tray in front of her on a lab bench.

CAPTION (Edith thinking): Perhaps I plunged into the study of the world’s smartest invertebrates as a substitute for what I could not do.

View of Shackleford and Chen. Chen sitting at the terminal typing. Shackleford is staring into Edith/Octopus’s tank.

CAPTION (Machine talk): We are ready to begin the process on you now, Professor Sterling.

CAPTION (Edith thinking): These jokers would never understand what a real commitment like that feels like.

View of Edith/Octopus in her tank, looking back at us, almost glowering. We see a print-out screen in part of the panel, showing us what she is writing. It reads simply, “NO.”

Close up on Shackleford’s face.

SHACKLEFORD: No?

CAPTION (Machine talk): I told you I have one more condition, Admiral.

Extreme close-up on the Edith/Octopus’s eyes.

CAPTION (Machine talk): I wish to remain in my current form, and be placed in its natural habitat…

Edith/Octopus’s P.O.V. Shackleford, Chen, and a couple of techs looking into the tank, with appalled expressions. A faint reflection of the Edith/Octopus can be seen in the glass of the tank.

CAPTION (Machine talk): …together with adequate support for recording my experiences there.

(Note: this panel should take up about 2/3 of the page.)

From high above view of the factory floor. It has changed a good deal since first seen: it is cleaner, there is more equipment there. There are at least three hospital-style beds, and a conference table. Officers and white-coated lab personnel are sitting around the conference table, obviously in the middle of a rather contentious meeting.

CAPTION (Edith thinking): Well, bet they sure didn’t see that coming.

CAPTION (Edith thinking): They’ll pretend to debate and to argue and to resist and think deep thoughts about the “ethics” of the situation.

CAPTION (Edith thinking): But in the end I’ll bet they couldn’t be more pleased.

CAPTION (Edith thinking): I mean, how often is it that an inconvenient witness to your questionable deeds volunteers to be disposed of?

A large, now partly sealed tank with some oxygenation/filtration equipment on top is being moved on a forklift, which is backing into a freight elevator in the lab, the same elevator which we saw on Page 4 of this script.

CAPTION (Edith thinking): After much back and forth and bickering about protocols, the boys consent to my one-way trip.

View inside an academic office. A messy one and cheap one – florescent lighting above, books and papers strewn everywhere. We see PROESSOR REBECCA WAITE in profile, looking down at her desktop computer with an astonished expression.

CAPTION (Edith thinking): Unknown to them, I do one last hack and send some…useful data to someone who I think might be able to use it.

Outside view. An unmarked truck, pulling away from the factory building. A black government sedan is just behind it.

CAPTION (Edith thinking): Becky Waite isn’t a friend, exactly. But she has the intellect to make sense of the data and the will to make interesting trouble with it.

Outside view. A C17 cargo aircraft is seen in long view, with the truck seen in the previous panel next to it.

CAPTION (Edith thinking): I send no good-byes to anyone. No one should mourn me…