Story Pitch: The Chronicles of the Night Watch (Part 2 of an Original Work)


Complete version of the teaser artwork; Created by Edward Sioson

This post is a continuation of Story Pitch: The Chronicles of the Night Watch (Part 1 of an Original Work). Click here for the first part. Also, welcome back to Dateline Movies, and this is the second part of our post.

Volume 2: Life (and Death) in the City


A few months later, The Night Watch continues to monitor their beloved city as much as they can. They are now facing new demons within themselves, including Linda refusing both Jack and Thomas' advances, Travis and Holly's unstable attempt at a serious relationship, Ben and Ray becoming the best of friends, and Lizzie letting go of her past traumas to be with Ray. Each of the members have a hard time managing their respective Cypher groups, and in fact, more than once, they are nearly threatened to go on a war against each other.

While crime rates are becoming progressively lower with their presence, the rest of the Vicious Circle savagely attempt to reclaim their lost ranks. Shockingly, the members of The Clock are all parts of Division-X, and are simply attempting to infiltrate the Vicious Circle in the hopes that The Metro will not reach the same levels of criminality in other parts of the globe, verifying that the agency's cause is indeed just and pure.

To everyone's surprise in The Night Watch, Ben Chapelle is actually a traitor, and is actually working for The Wyrm ever since the beginning, but his motivations remain a mystery. After luring the rest of The Night Watch, with the exception of Ellen, who remains being the "face" of the team, to the sewers, Ben proceeds to ambush them with The Flesh King's army, leaving all of the rest to split-up and make their escape, which they all manage to do. Bernadette had the harshest of time, as she escaped the sewers while under the influence of several drugs. The rest of The Night Watch are sent-off to apprehend Ben, who is also revealed to be selling valuable Eterna Sciences, Incorporated properties to the Vicious Circle, for his crimes, while they must also lend a hand to Division-X, whose cover has been blown and are now attempting to evacuate.

Several missions later, and each of The Night Watch are falling deeper into the rabbit hole. Each and every one of them are now targeted for death, with the first victim being Ray, who was shot to death after discovering what the Burning Bush Program really is, followed by A.J. As the team finally cornered Ben, they are then ambushed by surprisingly powerful armed soldiers working for The Wyrm, injuring Jack and Travis and killing Thomas, forcing them to retreat to "The Pig Pen", Linda and Thomas' underground prison.

There, Ben comes clean that "Miss Shadow" and "The Wyrm" are the same person: Constance Maudie. Ben reveals that he and Bernadette were sold to Constance through human trafficking to become the first test subjects for the Burning Bush Program, which involves using "APL-GEN-11" to brainwash them and give each of them relatively enhanced strength, agility, and reflexes. This not only reveals that the members of Cypher, all being treated by Eterna in "The Freida Mendoza Institute for Mental Health", being vulnerable to the Burning Bush Program, but also that Bernadette, promised to be given a better future outside the city, is also a traitor, and that Ben is only a distraction while Bernadette slowly takes control of Cypher, and turn them into an army. However, Ben assures that he is here to help, feeling guilty over his friends' deaths. Shocked beyond disbelief, the remaining team members contact Division-X for help, and they have agreed to charge "Eterna Central", Rita and Constance's headquarters. While this is happening, Ellen is arrested on charges of organizing a terrorist group by the name of "The Night Watch".

Bernadette also learns the horrifying truth that Rita and Edgar are her and Joel's biological parents, but it remains to be as to why she and her brother were abandoned.


Concept artwork for Robin Publicke's demise; Created by Faye Colinares
Bernadette discovers that The Brick, after retrieving each of the pieces from the other Vicious Circle groups, is meant to be a large collection of data, from drug recipes to weapon schematics, for the Division-X to use in the hopes that they can bring down Rita and Constance. Robin was suppose to surrender this to Division-X, until her demise, and until the device had been separated into several pieces and sold to the other groups. In addition, included in The Brick are the respective hypnotic commands that Rita and Constance will use in order to unify the Vicious Circle. The data itself can be accessed by sliding any of Robin's self-made cards, and the data needed will display for the user.

In a last bid to bring down the Burning Bush Program, The Night Watch, now compromised, and members of Division-X storm Eterna Central, only for Rita and Constance to gain the upper hand by making it look like that Division-X is "doing a colonizer's job", forcing the most of them to retreat, and for Jack, Travis, and Lizzie to die horrible deaths. They all died at least knowing what was Rita and Constance's endgame, and that is to make The Metro into the largest criminal hot-spot in the world, which would allow criminal organizations to do whatever illegal act that they desire, and are not to be interfered by government agencies such as Division-X because of the superiority of the Burning Bush Program subjects. They also learned that it was Bernadette who killed Robin Publicke, as a means to attract the attention of Division-X, so as to personally show them that The Metro is, from now on, off-limits. Ben also dies at the hands of Bernadette, to whom he pleads to avenge their friends' deaths.

By the conclusion of this volume, Constance, revealing that "being bad makes you richer", and now with the knowledge what The Brick contains, said that The Night Watch was allowed to form only to remove whomever they claim as useless, and to finally unite the Vicious Circle, meets with Ellen, now sentenced to death via lethal injection for leading The Night Watch and "disrupting the peace", where they engage in a heart-wrenching conversation about superheroes, revolution, and the futility of each. This leaves Ellen, although trying to remain hopeful, distraught at the thought that The Night Watch were just mere pawns, as she is being literally dragged to her death.

The Metro is no longer the paradise for everyone that it was supposed to be,  with many coming to realize that it was Edgar Atkins, Esq. who wanted to make the city better, and not its founders, and is now an inaccessible crime capital. Division-X is forced to answer for their supposed contribution to the chaos, and Bernadette is reunited with her little brother Joel.

The final chapter reveals that Bernadette is now looking forward to leaving the city for good via bus, hoping to start fresh. However, Bernadette realizes too late that Joel is just a product of Constance's hypnosis. The real Joel was actually Ben Chapel, who was starting to remember his and her identities, resulting in him "betraying" the team. In addition, when Constance, who believed that Bernadette has no longer any use, removed all of her programming, Bernadette realizes the horrifying truth that Rita and Edgar are her and Ben's biological parents. Constance says that she made it look like that the two of them were "generously donated" to her by Rita, and has transformed them into her personal pawns. To make matters much more confusing, the hallucinatory Robin Publicke was also a part of her hypnotic suggestions, and the pills were needed to remedy her unspecified mental illness, which makes keeping Bernadette under control more difficult.

She then asks the bus driver to stop by a steep cliff, and she blankly stares at the sunlit sea, startled at the fact that she just killed the people that really did care about her. Bernadette then begins to tear-up as she wonders if she killed them because Constance hypnotized her to do so, or that because she was just evil.

Meanwhile, the surviving members of The Night Watch, Linda and Holly, forever haunted by the deaths of their friends, continue to live in The Metro in their respective jobs, hoping, and praying, that someday, the hope that shined in The Metro will continue.

And here we are, at the end of our second part of our pitch for The Chronicles of the Night Watch. Before we leave, let me share with you one of the songs that helped established the tone of the story. It is "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" by Tears for Fears. Thank you Mr. Robot for this awesome song! Stay tuned for more Dateline Movies!

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