S4/E1 | Detainment

Thirteen Days of Halloween Tenants, a co production of iHeart three D Audio Blumhouse Television and Grim and Mild from Aaron Yankey. Headphones recommended. Listener discretion advised.

Oh yeah, the.

Oh shit?

Okay, three minutes, plenty of time.

You have three new messages.

Okay, could be worse.

I called yesterday to talk about my warranty.

I talked to a woman.

I think her name shouldn't be me and no ed.

We talked about my quarranty, did we? But I say I've had any questions about my warranty?

Jesus. I'll call back looking forward Friday.

March twenty second, at seven thirty three pm.

We understand your business is important to you, and that's why it's important.

To protect it.

Not my business is not important to me.

No one likes to think about the.

Unforeseen, literally impossible.

But what if I told you you don't have.

To today at six fifty seven am?

Nikes? What did you call from a fallout shelter and of messages?

Okay, not too bad? Maybe this day won't be a complete shit shell.

Hi, do you work here?

Well, my shirt matches the walls, so that's a good guess. But actually we're not open for another.

This will only take a second to I smell coffee.

Yeah, that's for customers.

How considerate.

There's a little paper.

Cups, no need, I brought my own.

That's a giant thermos.

We have a long drive.

Okay, so what can I help you with?

It's just you here.

Like I said, we just opened sugar in the cabinet under right.

So did you need assistance.

Or well, not quite.

I was just curious if your boss was in that.

See I have a.

Return a return, well we don't really take.

Well, that's why I wanted to come in person, sort of a special circumstance.

Right.

Well, I don't know exactly if when the manager will be back in today, but you could come back another day.

And oh, unfortunately I'm on a schedule. If you could just take a look and tell me if I've got a case, it would be a tremendous hy.

Okay, where is it in my car? Your car?

Well, I couldn't carry it myself back.

Why that's strong.

Yeah, Columbian blend should be pretty easy for you.

I'm parked right out front.

Right sure? Why not?

This is me the unmarked windowless murder van you're wicked.

Hi, now.

You better?

What hu Jesus?

What is this place?

Wait?

Why am I handcuffed? What am I doing here? Am I under arrest?

What?

What for?

What did he say?

Who are you people?

Wait?

Why are you doing this?

Stop?

Stop?

Let me go.

I didn't do anything.

Turn to the left.

What am I doing here?

Turn to the right.

If I am under arrest, you have to tell me what I'm charged with, face me else this is unlawful imprisonment.

Smile.

Oh, you've gotta be kidding me. Left hand, first finger, roll it over in the press it down on the scanner. Wait what are we waiting for.

The machine to match them up?

Max them up with what? I've never been arrested for anything?

Left hand, middle finger, roll it over in the ink. Press it down on the scanner.

Wait, this is going to take forever.

We have the time requisition of resident alpha SAE one five, six to zero.

Inventory. What is happening to me?

Inventory? One pair of black sunglasses, missing nosebies, A collection of keys hung from what looks like a shoelace.

I haven't done anything wrong.

One lighter does not appear to work. One pack of juicy fruits coustrip, fluff, credit card, debit card, photo ID, keep on pro free sandwich.

I need those loose bills and.

Change totaling two twenty two fifty correction twenty two to forty.

That's a bunch.

Okay, so you're robbing me too? Is that it?

One necklace imitation silver in the shape of a half moon, waxing gibbus, one black jacket, cleather, one jacket, fu leather pants, denim ripped, one belt, one pair of black boots what I call combat boots, flannel overshirt, cotton T shirt, socks for zier underbands.

And that's you.

Sign air.

You can't take my property before you tell me what I'm accused of. This is unlawful search and seizure.

You may submit a petition to have these items returned to you, but you have to sign for them first.

Well, can I fill out that petition? Please?

You'll have to visit the Resident relations office.

Okay, where is that? Not here?

Temperate to a ninety six point six, A little.

Low and after such a warm reception.

Okay, see the light on the end of my pen. Just follow it with your eyes, keep your head still to the left, to the right.

Tell me what I'm doing here?

An optitude test?

First?

Your vision good? Now, this may be cold.

Now, oh, just preaze is Oh tell me where I am in the clinic.

Cough the clinic where no fluid in the lungs, no signor bronchitis?

Good?

No, say, I don't understand why no one will answer me.

Ah?

Good, okay, now make a fist.

Wow, your heart rate is rather high.

You're right handed?

Left handed?

Interest? Why smoke, drink? Take drugs?

Well?

I could use all the above right now.

Any history of illness?

I was feeling fine until Have.

You been vaccinated for tetanus?

Just tetanus?

Probably time for a booster. Any history of rubella, rheumatism, mumps, measles, consumption.

Do people still get that smallpox?

Curvy scarlet fever?

Yeah?

Maybe playing Oregon trail.

Migrains, blurred vision, associative thoughts, associative non psychoses, grass and drum walking, corpse.

Foll you dear, I've never even heard of that.

Have you ever fainted? When's the last time you cried? How many sexual partners.

Have you had?

Okay, we're done here.

That is just the first page of the questionnaire.

Hello, ah, yes, yes, should be any minute now, thank you. You can wit in the hall perfectly. We don't expect any excitement, do we. I buzz you when we're ready. I'll be right with you. Yes, yes, exactly this morning. Actually here with me now in fact, will do?

Will do? Okay?

Be seeing you?

Oh?

Quite sorry about that, you know, always racing around to catch up here. Okay, let's start at the beginning, shall we Siuri Rodriguez. No, I'm beg your pardoner.

That is not my name.

You're not.

I am Siuri Martinez.

Definitely Rodriguez in our files. Well, we'll just call you Siary then, Siary. I am aiden, your case worker. Should you have any questions, I am to be your first point here?

Where is here?

Well? This is my office. I know it's small, but there are a lot of other cases and thus a lot of other case workers.

No, no, this place? Where am I?

Why? This is the Pendleton, the Pendleton Rehabilitation Center. Why are you saying you don't remember how you got here?

Oh?

I remember being kidnapped.

I'm asking why because it seems like you went looking for Rodriguez but ended up with Martinez by mistake.

In that case. Why do you think we wanted her.

What How should I know? I guess because she committed some crime?

And what crime might that mean?

How the fuck would I know that?

Would you?

What I mean?

I keeped him on the desk, But such a small desk, and with so many cases all open at once, and each with more paperwork than the last, I need all the space I can get just to try to keep things organized. Would you like one?

No?

Alrighty? You know they have lost some of their mintias, so Sayuri Martinez Rodriguez.

Martinez Garcia Ilgaras Cruz.

Born Beaumont Hospital, May twenty second, nineteen eighty nine. Oh that's one twenty three pm.

I'm not sure.

Mother of philosophy teacher, father at exoplanetology biologists.

Well the other way around?

How's that?

Professor dad? Doctor mom?

One point sixty three meters in heights.

I'm more comfortable with Imperial fifty three kilogram size seven shoes.

Didn't you notice that your new clothes fit perfectly the first time you tried them on?

You mean the jumpsuit and sandals. Yeah, like a bad dream.

You broke your left arm in the sixth grade.

Right arm eighth grade.

Was that before or after you were suspended for smoking in the girl's bathroom.

Hey h I think that was high school.

Some thirty one credits accumulated in various higher learning programs, no degrees? Is that correct?

What's it to you?

Your favorite cat was named spot Neck. At least if the answers to your security questions can be trusted in all your life, You've only left the United States once to visit the Toronto Airport. You're allergic to pineapple, and you are the fourth owner of a nineteen ninety six

Okay, suppose you're wrong.

Hope for the sake of argument, that these addictions are not clerical errors but indicate something else.

And what's that That you've got the wrong guy?

Well, then I'd say you have nothing to worry about. The smallest er, unfathomable as that is, would certainly be rectified before the completion of your E ando, B and O evaluation. And observation.

How long does that last.

Until you are properly evaluated and observed? Needless to say, anyone who had been improperly admitted and quartered as you are suggesting, would be detected, have their intake records modified and amended, and be summarily extricated from the facility.

Has that ever happened before?

Not to my knowledge.

But if it did, if.

You locked someone up despite substantial evidence disputing their guilt, wouldn't you be compelled to act upon it?

Wouldn't your conscience?

What you must understand is that each of us is but a cog, a single functionary point in an intricate machine. I'm confined to the authority granted by the boundaries of my position, with limited influence beyond the walls in this room. I'm, in fact subject to the same unyielding hierarchy to which you now find yourself bound. In fact, in many ways, I am in a much lower position than yourself. So there is no acting on one's conscience as you suggest. There's simply scope.

Okay, rapid fire around. Am I under arrest?

We don't like to use that word.

Can I leave of my own free will?

Not?

At this time?

On what grounds are you holding me?

The ground of the Pendleton rehability?

What is my charge?

None at this time?

No charge. How can you detain me if there is no.

Charge under suspicion?

Suspicion of what?

Being dangerous?

Dangerous? What the hell does that mean? Dangerous? How am I dangerous? Do I seem dangerous to you? Do you feel threatened?

A little help in here?

It's the problem.

I don't know who you think I am, but you've got the wrong person.

I demand to be shown the evidence against me, she demands. I demand to be read by Miranda Rights. I demand to be given my phone call. I demand to speak to a lawyer. I demand to see my files.

Move wait a moment. First days are hard for everyone, and I know it can seem like a lot right now, but this can be a very nice place for you if you let it. Crimes in Carill are going to take you to your habitation. You'll end the day or the night to settle in, and we'll try again tomorrow.

Do you.

What about my phone call?

What about it?

Hey, come back here. You can't leave me like this. Hello.

Hello.

They can't do this to me. They can't and they know they can't. I just need to show them that I'm not who they think I am, that I am who I say I am, And really it should be easy because I am me. But how do I prove it? How does anyone actually prove that they are who they say they are? Who's that?

I know?

There's someone there. I can hear you in the next cell. Mm hmm.

Habitation what don't call themselves? Say? Habitations are simply rooms.

I don't know what it looks like on your side of the wall, but my eight foot cube has metal bars for a door, a bed frame bolted to the floor, shelf chains to the wall, and combination toilet sinc with no seat.

And no window.

It also has a mirror.

What's that supposed to mean?

That?

It's clearly your first.

Day, but you have to understand there's been a mistake.

I really don't belong here.

Listen. I've been living in this eight foot cube for a long time, the one you currently occupy, seeing a lot of visitors with a lot of sad stories. They come, they go, and new ones come in their place. But there has to be I'm not your Virgil Dante. I learned this lesson hard, and you'd be well off to learn it sooner. The only way through this is to be strong and keep to yourself. Don't make friends.

So this is a prison, then what the pen?

No, it's a rehabilitation center.

Rehabilitation for what if you're here?

There's a reason, even if you don't see it yet.

How much more time do you have?

Ever?

Oh?

Everyone in the Pendleton served a life sentence?

What?

But why?

The reason for your captivity may not be the thing to focus on in a way, it doesn't matter.

Then what does what you do next?

I'm going to get out, and how may I ask? Or are you going to do that?

I'll call my lawyer, your lawyer, Well, I'll find a lawyer, and eddy lawyer who hears about my case is sure to take it. I've been unlawfully imprisoned. My civil liberties have been violated. We could take down the whole establishment.

Okay, short of mounting a groundbreaking legal defense, what's your backup plan?

Escape?

Come again?

Escape?

You don't have to whisper that word doesn't stoke much fear around here, Lieutenant Grimes, Lieutenant Carrill for it. Resident, Just letting you know I'm planning my next escape. Good luck, you see anything dealing.

Surely people try to escape.

Generally they're caught, then punished by whatever the pen considers a proportional response.

Hmmm.

So whatever the goal of this inhumane experiment, the results are arousing success.

Everyone's spirits have been broken.

No, not everyone. But in all my time here, I've only known one who never gave in. In fact, it was the fellow that used to have your room. Tell me is his name still written on the wall.

There's graffiti all over this place, but.

Right above the door, carved into the stone. Covalis Caval, a Frenchman, always on a plot, and that was the word he used for it.

What was he in for escaping?

Prison?

Oh? So this is not a prison, but it's where you get sent when a prison can't hold you.

Because I understand Caval did time in some of the worst lockups known to humanity and managed to slip out of every cage that held him until he reached the pin.

Okay, but what was his crime in the first place?

That's a great question.

So did he ever escape?

Yes?

How did he do it?

You don't have to whisper?

Everybody knows by now, okay, fine, what did he do?

He never stopped trying.

But what did he try?

Say?

Just about everything under the sun.

Okay, you're not really giving me much to work with here.

What are you hoping for? Exactly instructions that the first person you meet here will miraculously give you everything you need to make a break.

Okay, Look, I'm only just first of all, forget it.

Forget what the idea of getting out? You're not, I'm not, none of us are.

Well, you don't have to be mean about it.

At this point, I've spent more time inside than out.

I'm sorry.

Well, don't be That's not your way to bear. My point is what you've seen of the Pendleton is only a fragment. It's a labyrinth designed to be disrienting as a suppression technique. They say it's impossible to memorize, which I believe. And you can't get out if you don't know where you're going here. You can walk a straight line and end up back where you started, retrace your steps to somewhere you've never been before, passed through a door, and immediately lose track of the other side.

That's impossible.

What does it matter? Oh?

Do the laws of physics matter?

As someone who was a physicist in a former life. I've learned to separate the rules of the outside from those inside the pen.

Former life, were you also studying reincarnation?

No building nuclear reactors? Oh so the first thing to understand is the tricks that get you out of other prisons don't work in the pen. But he tried them all caval. Whatever you may be dreaming up now, maybe his experience will dissuade you.

Well, I'm all yours.

Coval was the hell of a lock thick and it didn't take much twisted hairpin, misshapen paper clip, rusty spoon. Problem is this place is full of doors, doors that lead to car doors, full of doors that lead to other car doors, full of other doors, doors, doors everywhere, but hardly any windows.

Isn't that a skylight up there?

Aren't you observant? Look and tell me what you see. Nothing, It's dark, exactly dead ends all of them. Govall was a cut purse. A pickpocket could get his hands down anyone's trousers, but there was always a crap shoot. Use handkerchiefs half done to do lists on a good day, a couple of bucks and some loose leaf smut. On

Yes, it's got no graffiti. That was caval. His tunnels, ever, lead to the outside.

One very nearly did went missing a week before some dumb ass Cohn on janitorial duty heard or rumble in the ceiling and reported it to a supervisor.

It was Caval.

He'd been up in the air ducks, living off candy bars and drinking collected condensation.

I'm guessing he couldn't find an exit.

Should have an intake right where air flows in from the outside. Whether you can make it out or not is another question. But Caval said he never caught a speck of sunlight, which confirmed a bleak suspicion we'd long held about the pen. It's a closed system, totally disconnected from the outside world.

Like no internet.

Please phone maybe if you want to make an inside call.

What about television?

Closed circuit mail? You can write it, they'll screen it and throw it away. Newspapers sides the occasional new resident. Very little comes into the pen, far less ever leaves.

Doesn't anyone protests, demand fair treatment, petition the warden for basic human rights.

Oh, nobody talks to the warden. Nobody, not that I know of, never even seen them. Caval would agree with you, But what can you change when you hold none of the power to fight from the inside. You have to become one of the warders.

I don't get it is that some kind of metaphor.

Caval had been on a stint in the hole. No one had seen him in a month. Then one day it lights up. There's a new guard on the block, tall and muscular with a full red beard. I didn't think much of it until the guy called rolled in a French accent.

Wait wait, wait, wait, you're saying solitary.

He faked some kind of injury, got the attending guard alone in the cell, then knocked the bastard out, stole his clothes, his keys, and detained them in a stead Squez managed to access areas of the pen he'd never seen before, but nothing special, locker room, lounge, the john, and still he couldn't find an exit. By the next morning, the jig was up and Gavall was back in solitary, serving an extended sentence that.

Is absolutely insane. Gutsy though.

And then there was the gun gun fake gun quittled with a spoon out of a block of balts of wood. Pretty rough but convincing enough to hold his caseworker hostage. Was going okay until he pretended to cock him and broke the barrel in half.

These seems to be getting more.

And more desperate. Well, he also tried seduction. Don't no much. He didn't like to talk about it, as I understand, he didn't discriminate, but beyond receiving a better portion lunch tray or first choice for work detail. Like everything else, these liaisons led only to dead ends.

This is getting kind of sad.

It gets sadder. There was his hunger strike lasted forty days, ended with a feeding tube jammed down his throat. And there were the fake illnesses castor oil in the eyes to make them look infected. That type of thing ended up getting him in more trouble than it was worth.

Did he go blind?

The eye healed up fine. But the doctor have you met her?

Yep?

She it is no joke, runs that infirmary like her own personal laboratory with patients for guinea pigs. After too many times crying wolf, she took a special interest in caval developed a course of treatment just for him. What do you mean, constant inva of examinations, courses of experimental drugs, complete psychological remapping, in a word, brainwashing.

Were you serious?

The pen recognized him as a threat to neutralize it, they needed to reprogram him. That's what he was here for. That's what we're all here for.

Really.

Oh yes, they have many ways to do it, some so subtle you won't notice. Anything is happening, others well more forthright. But no matter what you think you can handle, who you think you are, they will get to you sooner or later, by hook or by crook, They get to everyone. Cavall came to the conclusion that if there was no way to slip out peacefully, the only alternative would be to take the pen by force. And so, one day, like every day, a few minutes before five,

Don't you mean residents?

That's what I said, right. No one knows exactly how the guards got back in, and I imagine it was those damn doors. I don't know where or how, but I believe they're secret doors all over this place, not too good at letting anyone out, but for someone who understands how they work, they can be used to get into just about anywhere anywhere.

What did they do?

In the middle of the night, An army of armed guards poured unto the floor. Seemed like they appeared from nowhere, but I suspect they came in a few at a time through different spots all over the block, dressed as prisoners and masqueraded as part of the rebellion, taking up residents and empty cells until they were sufficient in number, and all at once, they took a decisive strike. As far as I know, they didn't have any evidence against caval but still the warden pegged him as the mastermind.

How long was he there for.

That time a year or was it too Jesus Christ? They wanted to make an example of him, and I'd say it worked. Nothing like that has been attempted since.

How was he when he got out?

Skinnier paler the red Beard was back? Took him a while to get on his feet. The real problem, the reason every plot failed, was they didn't have an exit strategy. However far he got, he'd still be searching for a way out, without knowing where it could be, even what it would look like. The question becomes, how can the guards navigate the pen but the cons can't. I don't think the answer is intelligent, which led to a rumor that the guards carry a map.

A map, wouldn't that make it too easy?

I didn't believe it either until one day our master pickpocket had got his hands on one. At least that's what he thought it was.

Did you see it?

I did?

What did it look like?

Palm sized circular, a lightweight disc like a big aluminum coin. The content was a mess concentric circles and intersecting lines, boxes and arrows, and squiggles and squares, superimposed with symbols like invented hieroglyphics, and naturally there was no key. Honestly, the image hardly seemed to resemble a map at all, but Cavall became convinced he could use it to get out the stone. Yeah, maybe he was onto something over my head, says.

The nuclear physicist.

What he was planning, he never said, but I knew he wouldn't hesitate if there was any chance for freedom. The day he found that map would be his last. That night, like any other, the cells were locked at exactly seven. I laid in my bunk, still as a stone, listening for any sign that caval was making his way, but nothing. The clock chimed eight nine, ten eleven midnight, and then it happened, a terrible sound, so loud it shook the bars, and shrill, like the tearing of metal, hard,

But I thought you said it was midnight.

Why I trust a thing like time? While I maintenance crew welded the skylight shut from a scissor lift. Roll was called. Of course, Covall was missing. The pen organized a search, scoured every cell, office, car, door, conduit and dark corner they could think of, questioned each resident, and I imagine every guard and member of the staff too, but no one knew anything. Even I didn't really except I truly believed that he had made it.

Wow, Wow, Where did he go?

I don't know, none of us do.

I wish I could ask him.

You can try.

What do you mean?

Okay? If she comes with me for a walk, Bromuka, where down to deep block? God would boom? You're going to behave.

Mm hmm.

This way?

So caval you mean to say he's still here?

Twenty eight days? He made it on the outside before they caught.

Him, So he didn't escape.

Long enough to see the lunar cycle, but not happily ever after.

Where did they find him?

I don't know, but I'm sure it wasn't in here.

Well, what happened after they caught him?

What happens to everyone who tries to escape down to the dungeon? The dungeon solitary confinement?

Oh oh, so you don't mean like an actual.

Like a literal due I do, okay?

Is he still down there?

No? Eventually they gave him a room in d the Special Project's.

Ward, and you never asked him how it worked or what he.

Saw I did. But maybe you'll have better luck.

I'm sorry if it's okay, I wanted to ask you a question. Is that okay? I wanted to ask uh? When you escaped? What did you see? I'm sorry. I don't speak French or the.

Boss, but the block, look at the gods, steal the clothes, get the key, get the map.

But you can't read the map.

You need to be able to read the map.

If you can't read the map, you.

Have to take the door without knowing where it goes. If you take the door without knowing where it goes, you want the.

Way you'll go where he'll go.

And when you get there, you wont know how to get back, but they will. They will find you.

Then they will bring you back.

But which one?

Only one way up and many ways back? Always lead back, always lead back?

Is he always?

How can I rest? If he's out there?

How can he go?

If I'm in here.

I am alone, but not alone.

I will never be alone, just like he will never be alone. Alone but not alone alone but on cave.

When you made it out, when you escaped? Can you tell me anything, anything at all? How did you do it? What did you see? Where did you think you were? Anything would be helpful. Please.

If I can't know why I'm here, at least I need to know where here is.

I know you you do the people who talk, well.

I'm sorry, I don't understand.

You.

Sure, I have been here a long time.

I just got here today.

So it seems so, it seems so, it seems so.

It seems so. It seems so. It seems so it seems.

Do you mean that what it seems is not what it seems?

Man?

Wait, do you mean you've seen someone else who looks like me?

It seems that you, like me, are not alone, like he is not alone, like he is not alone, like we are not alone, all of us, none of us, not now, not there, never to be alone again.

See said to.

Show you the way back, Like I said, navigating this place can be confusing.

What happened to him?

I don't know. In a way I don't want to know. It's sad, but in here it really is better to keep your expectations of other people low.

Frip, Rodriguez Martinez lights out in your habitations now, Jorge mus.

Ride, I'm slip.

I'm full of them. You knew here, so I'll say it once. No talking, It's about going on with you, sweet dreams.

Ten hours to the morning. The first night is the longest hanging there.

I thought you weren't going to be my Virgil.

Keep your expectations low. I will too get through the night sleep. If you can join me for breakfast in the morning six am sharp, you'll meet people who will tell you things I never could.

Okay, thank you, good night Frip. Hour one hour, two hour, three hour, four or five. Somebody's out there, mm hmmm, hello.

Oh yeah, yah, I go ma, I say ma, hi sign What are you doing here?

Why are you barefoot?

Oh?

Yeah?

Thirteen Days of Halloween Pennance starring Natalie Morales. Episode one Detainment, written by Alexander Williams, editing and sound design by Jesse Funk and rima Ilkayali, featuring the voices of Joseph Whipp, Alex Bowling, Jeff Bauser, Raphael Corekil, Jay Jones, Lauren Vogelbaum, Miguel Perez, Steve b Green, Laura Shine, Blair, Chandler Wilber