Artifact

Meg Aerin and Tessa Finn are trapped within a neuroscience institute that has systematically dismantled their identities. Their plan is simple: gather evidence of the organization's crimes by infiltrating its deepest experimental chambers. But accessing the truth requires descending into a system where dreams are weaponized, where ancient ritual fuses with modern technology, and where understanding the machinery demands immersion in it. The turning point arrives with Oona Reyes: a prisoner with anomalous cognitive abilities who can anchor multiple subjects into shared dream states.

Meg and Tessa's investigation leads them deeper into the facility's classified systems. Oona Reyes, imprisoned within the Sitri Center, proposes a descent rather than escape. She possesses anomalous cognitive abilities allowing her to anchor multiple subjects into shared dream states. Rather than simply aiding an escape, Oona suggests descending deeper into the institute's classified systems to gather intelligence on its true operational scope.

What unfolds is a negotiation between coercion, consent, and the seduction of transgressive knowledge. The boundaries between therapy, research, and exploitation become deliberately blurred. As the three move deeper, they encounter the institute's core mythology, revealed through the architecture of its experimental chambers.

The facility has integrated ancient Sumerian religious symbols and ritual frameworks into its technology, creating a space where historical religious practice, modern neuroscience, and controlled transgression converge. The institute's power derives not from technological innovation alone, but from its ability to map ancient forms of ritualized experience onto contemporary consciousness research. This fusion represents both the sophistication of the operation and the profound vulnerability of subjects who become absorbed in its constructed realities.

By the episode's end, the line between investigation and participation has dissolved entirely. The characters discover that understanding the institute's methods requires not resistance but immersion into its ritualistic structures. Artifact poses a troubling question: whether accessing forbidden knowledge always requires the sacrifice of the self, and whether resistance can exist within a system designed to make submission feel like discovery.