Avoid Contact

"Avoid Contact" is the first episode of the second season of The Rain, and the ninth episode overall. Directed by Søren Balle and written by Jannik Tai Mosholt, it was premiered on May 17, 2019.
On the run from Apollon soldiers, the group follows a set of coordinates to a base where rebel scientists are working on a vaccine for the virus.
== Plot ==
The season opens on a scene of pre-viral normalcy, showing a parking lot full of shoppers moving to and from their cars. A mother and her young son get into their car, then the mom accidentally backs into another car. She gets out to talk to the other driver. As they argue, The Rain starts. Everyone outside collapses, writhes and dies. The mom's little boy gets out of the car and goes to her side.
Simone speaks over this scene, talking about how normal and predictable everything used to be, and how they thought they could grow up and change the world. When the rain came, there was nothing anyone could do. She continues, saying that even though they couldn’t do anything back then, they can do something now. They’re locked in a quarantine zone with the same people who created the plague. Her brother is the key to fixing things. She just has to make sure he survives. But they don’t have any place safe to hide, so they keep running.
In the present day, the gang drives by in the Hummer, followed by immigration Apollon. Patrick, who is driving, has 5 backseat drivers yelling instructions while he dodges moving and parked cars. The bridge back to Denmark is within site when they reach a roadblock they can’t get around. Simone and Rasmus’ dad, Frederik, is there waiting for them. He demands time to speak with Simone and doesn’t give Kira a chance to say no.
Frederik loudly tells Simone that Rasmus could kill everyone, so it’s imperative that they turn him in. Quietly, he hands her a slip of paper with the coordinates for a secret base where a rebel group can cure Rasmus and use him to find the cure for everyone else. He tells her if the rebels can't help Rasmus, she'll have to kill him. As he finishes talking, Kira is warning him that his time is up and he needs to back away. He doesn’t move quickly enough for her, so she shoots him in the back, through the heart.
Watching his father die, and knowing the danger he and Simone are in, Rasmus panics. He gets sweaty and breathes heavily, and then black veins appear on his skin. The guards around him contract the virus and die.
Patrick and Martin use the distraction to steal back their car keys. The entire gang makes it back into the car and they drive away. Patrick questions if it was the virus that incapacitated the guards, but the others are more interested in escape than skepticism. They ditch the car and run into the woods, letting the empty car continue down the road as a decoy. Then, Kira and another soldier go back at Apollon with Sten, explaining that the virus caught them off guard, allowing Rasmus and the others to escape. They tell Sten that the virus has completely taken over his immune system.
The gang finds an old army checkpoint supply depot and raids it for supplies. Rasmus spends the time staring at himself in a mirror. Simone finds him and asks if he’s okay. He responds: "I feel nothing." Simone reminds Rasmus that their dad tried to help them. He yells at her that Frederik tried to kill him, after leaving them in a bunker for six years. Rasmus is disgusted that Simone is crying for him. She sobs that she’s not crying for Frederik. Rasmus insists that no one cares if he lives or dies and Simone says that she cares
Flashback to Rasmus' nearly fatal childhood illness, for which Frederik developed the plague virus. He was treated at home, instead of a hospital, because of the experimental treatments his father used on him. Simone sits next to Rasmus’ bed, drawing pictures for him. He asks her to draw a picture of him, then falls asleep. Frederick comes in, already on the phone with Sten. He’s ready to test the virus on Rasmus. Simone watches as Frederik gives Rasmus the first of two 100 mg injections, given 1 hour apart.
Simone tells Martin more about their dad while she tends to the bullet wound Frederik gave him ("Trust Your Instincts"). He's sympathetic and agrees that she and Rasmus shouldn’t spare much concern for their father. Martin and Simone take the coordinates to the rest of the group, along with a map and a plan. The coordinates are in a spot near Roskilde, Denmark. Right now, the gang is far enough away from the Apollon headquarters that the guards aren’t breathing down their necks, and quite close to the Swedish coast.
As they are walking to Roskilde, Jean finds a strange tree in the woods. They realize that it’s infected with the virus. The tree has black veins on its bark, similar to the black veins that rose to the surface on Rasmus’ skin before he released the virus to kill the guards at the beginning of the episode. Everyone decides to stay far away from it, except for Rasmus, who is drawn to it. When he gets closer to the tree, we can see that the ground and the surrounding vegetation are also infected. Rasmus holds his hand out near a leaf. The leaf curls toward his fingers. At that moment, Simone comes back to get him and Rasmus follows her.
They walk through a town with a large cathedral, where Lea stops to stare. Jean tells the others to keep going, while he and Lea investigate the church. Lea goes inside and sits down to pray. Jean follows, but he’s a bit distracting when he knocks over things others have left behind. Lea doesn’t mind too much. Outside of town, the rest of the group find a man and a woman in hazmat suits examining another infected tree. They ask if the scientists can help them, and show them the coordinates Frederik gave Simone. The two scientists insist that they can’t do anything for them and try to turn them away, saying the area is contaminated.
After they finish collecting samples, the scientists use a blowtorch to burn the infected area surrounding the tree. Rasmus feels the fire as if he were the one being burned. He rolls on the ground and screams while Simone and Martin yell at the scientists to put out the fire. They shout back that they can’t. Once the fire is out, they talk. The scientists are named Fie and Anders. They live and work on a nearby base where they are trying to stop the virus. It’s safe from Apollon. They are skeptical of Simone and Rasmus’ story at first, since Frederik told the world that his children were dead. But Simone and Rasmus know enough inside information to convince them that Rasmus could be patient zero.
The base is huge and has a military-industrial feel to it. Patrick is anxious on the way in. He says he doesn’t trust this group and would rather wait outside, but the giant metal doors close behind them. They reach a room with cameras, where a voice of another doctor, Jakob, tells Fie that she can’t bring strangers into the lab. She tells him to scan the group for the virus. The scanner detects that Rasmus is infected, as foreseen. Fie explains to Jakob that this is patient zero, so he tells her to bring Rasmus to the lab.
Fie brings Simone and Rasmus directly to the lab where Jakob is waiting. He sends Fie and Simone to an observation room, while he starts collecting tissue samples, beginning with blood samples.
The others are taken to settle into their quarters at the base. Patrick and Martin ask for a tour, since they have questions. Anders shows them around the base and explains that some of them used to work for Apollon, but left when they discovered that Apollon was killing people. Apollon is searching for them, but the base has an electronic shield which makes it invisible to their technology. There are a drone jammer, wind turbines and solar panels on the roof that were all in place and running when the rebels arrived. They’ve been using them the whole time. Martin notes that the whole set up is strangely convenient.
Rasmus reports that the virus feels like a burning, sizzling fever that wants out of his body. He tells Jakob that he thinks he infected people, but Jakob says it’s impossible. Rasmus repeats that he just wants to get it out. Jakob says he’ll try to do that.
Anders shows the rest of the group the dorm and the storage room, where they can get clothes, sheets, towels, whatever. He says they started with 80 people, but now they’re down to 12. Anders says he’ll leave them there, then come back when there’s news. Before he goes, Anders mention that Jean could pick something out for his girlfriend, Lea. She corrects him, because they aren’t a couple. While they look through the stored clothing, Jean remarks that it was funny that Anders thought they were together. Lea reiterates that they aren’t a couple. Jean seems like he’s about to say that they could be, but he loses his nerve.
Martin tries to go over various security notes with Patrick, but he’s excited about the clothing now. Martin noticed that the rebels don’t seem to have any guns, most of the locks on the doors are so old that they’d be easy to kick in, if they were locked in, and the security cameras don’t appear to be working.
Jakob runs an initial round of tests and tells Simone that he thinks they can help Rasmus. He’ll know more after he runs more tests. Simone goes into the lab to see Rasmus, who’s looking at a slide of the virus. On screen, the pink cells all slowly turn black.
Rasmus tells Simone that he already feels like a lab rat. She says that they all help each other and he’s not a lab rat.
Fie asks Jakob what he plans to do next. He says he intends to do a lumbar spinal biopsy. Fie is shocked, because that test can kill someone with the virus. Jakob doesn’t even pause with what he’s doing. Fie argues that they shouldn’t do the test until they can be sure it won’t kill Rasmus, but Jakob argues that they don’t have time to wait. He says that the risk to Rasmus is small, and it’s worth it to get a pure virus sample. Fie says they should at least warn Rasmus and Simone about the risks of the procedure, but Jakob says that he doesn’t want to "unnecessarily alarm them."
Now that he’s signed Rasmus’ death warrant, Jakob goes for a walk through the facility, swinging by the greenhouse to nab some veggies, then turning left at the plastic tunnels. He follows them to the isolation ward where his sister Sarah, who has a chronic immune disorder, lives alone. She wants to catch up on all of the facility gossip, so she asks if he’s really angry with Fie, even though he’s sleeping with her, and if they really let a group of new people in, for the first time in forever. He pretends he doesn’t want to gossip, but he can’t resist telling her there’s a special boy in the group who could make all of her dreams come true. As they talk, he’s taking tissue samples and doing tests on her. He asks if she needs anything before he leaves. She wants to leave the isolation ward and to see the boy. Jakob tells her he needs to do tests and find the cure, first. He says it like he expects it will only take a few hours.
Simone decides it’s time to fill Martin and the others in on what’s happening. She finds them in the storeroom, trying on goofy outfits and laughing at each other. They stop when they see her. Martin asks about Rasmus. Simone says he’s okay, she just wanted to give them an update in case they were worried. Then she leaves the room. Martin follows to tell Simone that of course they were worried. He tries to apologize, but she tells him he has nothing to apologize for. She wants to have fun, too but she has to take care of Rasmus. Martin asks what he can do to help, and she tells him to take off the idiotic clothes he’s wearing, then walks away. Patrick walks by and agrees with her. Martin is left frustrated and confused.
Jean finds Lea praying again and makes annoying crunching noises while eating. Then he fake prays with her. She finally tells him they can be a couple if he’ll leave her alone to pray in peace and he happily agrees.
Simone chats with Rasmus before the lumbar puncture. He’s a little nervous, but he trusts the rebels, who’ve been nice to him so far. He understands that there will be some pain with the procedure. Jakob and Fie call Simone over to show her the map of the virus they’ve made so far. It’s a bacteria inside a virus, inside another virus. Everytime they look at the virus, it’s mutated. But if Rasmus is the source, they can find the original strand and zero in on it. Jakob tells Simone he’s glad she found them, then sends her out of the room. He won’t allow her to observe the procedure.
Martin has changed into a more flattering outfit and tries a more sincere apology this time. Then he asks Simone again to tell him what she needs. Turns out, what she needs is some time alone together in the bedroom, or whatever’s passing for a bedroom. When they’re cuddling in bed after making love, Simone asks Martin to promise he’ll never leave her. He promises, and she looks pleased.
Jakob begins the procedure. He’s very controlling, and continues to be dismissive of Rasmus. Rasmus tries several times to tell him that he doesn’t feel well and wants to wait, but Jakob insists that it will only take 2 minutes, then they’ll be done, and that the procedure is supposed to hurt. Rasmus begins to panic. Jakob draws a substance from his spine, he calls Anders in to show him that it’s not blood or spinal fluid. It’s thick and black, 100% viral. Anders leaves the door between the lab and the observation room open. Rasmus develops the black viral lines. A cloud of black smoke pours out of him, filling both rooms. Jakob’s sister Sarah is watching from another viewport and sees the whole thing, but is unaffected by the virus since she's outside. An alarm goes off and Simone goes to check on Rasmus and finds that he looks completely normal, lying unconscious on the examining table. Everyone else in the lab surrounds him on the floor, dead.
== Guest cast ==
* Anders Juul as Jakob
* Dan Zahle as Anders
* Virgil Victor Katring-Rasmussen as Markus
* Malin Rømer Brolin-Tani as Markus' mother
* Christian Brandt as Mad Driver
* Bertil De Lorenzi as Young Rasmus
* Camilla Kold Krohn Gade as Stranger
* Henrik Clemmensen-Nielsen as Scientist
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== References ==
Category:Episodes
Category:Season Two episodes
Category:Season Two