Sandy is Gone - Forever -

Logline: In a world where there’s no hiding one’s true identity from the watchful eye of the Government, a sixteen year old girl flees from everything she is and ever was in search of her father.

Synopsis: Dalesburg County, 2045. Citizens hide in their homes, the only sure way to escape a mysterious virus threatening their lives. Going outside without protection is unthinkable. Every last shred of hope, along with the life they once knew, has been lost. One night, a gunshot rings out. Gerald Walker, Hillscott Town Sheriff, shoots his neighbor Ellie in a furious scramble for the last remaining supplies. Ellie has a son, Ethan, and is the wife of wealthy taxpayer Benjamin Cooper, a widely respected pillar of the community and local hero. Left with no option but to run, Gerald escapes with a bag brimming with money, leaving behind his daughter Sandy and his wife Karen. Meanwhile, Mediflow Corporation rolls out a vaccine to all of the county’s residents.

Five years later, Sandy Walker is tormented not only by her classmates but by Ethan, who she has been living under the same roof as since Benjamin’s remarriage to the now pregnant Karen. Haunted by the mystery of her father’s disappearance, Sandy pours herself into investigating what happened that fateful night. Through researching the archives at her local library and diving into his past, Sandy discovers that Gerald stole a large sum of money to change his identity - an impossible feat considering that the Government can identify any of its citizens at a moment’s notice by scanning them on a molecular level. Not to mention that the entire county is held within the confines of the Wall, erected by the Government to protect Solaris City from new variants and outsiders carrying the virus.

After consulting with the county’s ex Vice Sheriff and gleaning some important information, Sandy travels to an abandoned reservoir, where traces of her father were supposedly found. Here, in this dank and isolated swamp, she encounters a pale and otherworldly figure named Charon who confesses to having aided Gerald in his escape from the System. He can help Sandy too, but for a fee obtained through passing a test which will change her forever.
Arnold Gauss, Sandy’s teacher with whom she shares a special bond, notices her disappearance straight away and tries to alert anyone who will listen. After all, a model student known for never having missed a day of school doesn’t just vanish into thin air. The principal, however, dismisses it as just another adolescent stunt. In the meantime, Benjamin too has been acting strangely. Growing more irritable by the day, he resorts to physical violence to discipline Ethan who has grown so close to Karen as to ask her to call her baby Ellie after his late mother.

One morning, Sandy arms herself with a pistol gifted to her by Gerald for her eleventh birthday and robs the biggest bank in the city to obtain her stepfather’s safety deposit box. While trying to escape, she runs into Mr. Gauss who implores her to turn herself in and allow him to help her evade a probable death sentence. As sirens ring out all around them, Sandy resists and accidentally shoots Gauss in the leg in an attempt to free herself. Petrified, she runs away.
Benjamin receives a call from the bank manager who informs him of what Sandy has done. Outraged, he clashes with Karen and storms out of the house with a shotgun. Karen bursts into tears and, in her distress, begins to go into labor. Ethan manages to come to her aid and phone an ambulance despite feeling out of his depth.
Meanwhile, Sandy is escorted across the county by the ex Vice Sheriff and Benjamin arrives at the bank where he begins indiscriminately killing anyone in his path. Indeed, after making countless donations and sacrifices for his hometown over the years, he has found himself bankrupt, and Sandy has taken the very last of his savings. Under immense mental strain, Benjamin reaches a breaking point and decides to end it all by shooting himself in the mouth.

Having entered the world prematurely, Ellie Cooper is kept under close observation in hospital, but the doctor informs Ethan that her vital signs look promising.
Sandy reaches the marsh and says goodbye to the ex Vice Sheriff, who is revealed to be Karen’s brother and therefore Sandy’s uncle. She then enters the murky waters of the reservoir to meet Charon.
As night falls, Charon and Sandy take a boat to an island in the middle of the swamp where she is met with a gaping chasm. Before helping her to descend into the pit, Charon gives her a new identity to memorize and a helmet she is not to remove from her head under any circumstances. He takes a look at the money she has stolen and proposes that they split it and take 500,000 dollars each. Now, having fully prepared and taken all the necessary precautions for the long journey ahead, Sandy says goodbye to Charon and enters the chasm where she is transported via a whirlwind into an underground dimension. Finally, she finds herself in a dazzling, surreal cave, the original shape of which has been lost to time and erosion. There she spontaneously removes the helmet and crawls through a small tunnel in the wall which is none other than a passageway to a new world. Little does she know that her actions are soon to cause a dizzying interdimensional paradox...