Scintilla is sixteen, destitute, and alone in New York, precisely the kind of girl that men with laboratories and no conscience find useful. Recruited by shadowy physicians conducting an illegal experiment, she is implanted with a hormone intended to suppress the natural erasure of pre-natal memory. The child she carries will enter the world fully conscious of all that came before birth. When maternal instinct overrides the terms of the agreement, she flees, hunted across the city’s underside, trading survival for dignity, until nothing is left but a desperate run toward a church she will never enter. The boy born from her final moments, Johannes, arrives in silence, his eyes already ancient, already knowing. Above the scene, an enigmatic humanoid turns the Tarot card of the Fool, and the question hangs unanswered in the air.