Date: November 12, 2026

Interviewer: Dr. A. Thorne

Subject: Declan Tate (Shepherd)

Dr. Thorne: You're the one they call Shepherd, right?

Tate: [sighs] Yes.

Dr. Thorne: The date is November 12th, 2026. You are claiming the immunity is not just biological. You are saying it's... psychological.

Tate: I’m saying the blind have different scars. But we don't have the canvas to paint them on. You lot, with your eyes open, you carry your damage in high definition.

Dr. Thorne: We've cataloged the manifestations. We know they take the form of the deceased—loved ones, victims—

Tate: That’s just the surface stuff. The easy stuff. You think the Shape is just a ghost story? It's a mirror for the things that broke you. I walked a group last week. One of them, she... she started screaming. Not a panic scream, a grief scream. I couldn't hear what was hitting her. To me, it was just silence. A cold, heavy dead spot in the air standing over her. But she felt it. She was screaming about the white hood, screaming about the chain. Societal trauma, doctor. The hate the world put on her, reflected right back. And I... I had to listen to her break apart while the air around her stood still.

Dr. Thorne: What about the incident on the 10th? The child. Children are innocent. They don't have that kind of history.

Tate: Innocence doesn't mean you haven't been hurt. It just means you don't have the words for it yet. The boy, he slipped his blindfold near the underpass. What haunts me is... he didn't scream for his mom, nor for his dad. He screamed like he was drowning in air. He started clawing at his own throat, curling up into a ball. Tight. Fetal. You ask me what a child has to be traumatized by? Life. The sheer violent shock of being ripped from the dark into the cold. That's the first scar, the one we all carry. The Shape... it showed him that. It put him back in the moment of his own birth, but without the comfort of the womb. Just the crushing pressure. I cut the rope, doctor. I didn't do it to save myself. I did it because the sound he was making... it... it wasn't human. It was the sound of something that wished it had never been born. You want to survive out here? You better hope your demons are just people. Because if they are something older... something primal... you won't even have time to blink.

Dr. Thorne: [whispering] Jesus, Tate.