Pirjo's attack on Carl and Assad

Pirjo’s attack on Carl and Assad turns their investigation into a struggle for survival. After Carl and Assad privately weigh whether they can unsettle Pirjo enough to make progress, a heavy rubber mallet swings toward Assad; the next blow strikes Carl before he can intervene. Carl catches only a glimpse of Pirjo bending over him. The assault is sudden, but what follows is methodical: Pirjo uses the control room’s equipment to restrain both men and make the building’s solar system part of the attack.

The Assault and the Trap

When Pirjo returns to the control room, both men are down, although Assad is beginning to lift his head. She binds his arms with non-insulated cable, then secures him to a bench by his ankles and thighs and fastens his body to old butcher’s hooks on the wall. She repeats the process with Carl, who is limp and difficult to move. Feeling sick, she pauses to recover before tying the two men together with the cable and inspecting her work. The careful sequence leaves them unable to get free or help one another. Pirjo checks the car keys in the larger man’s pocket and considers how the scene might be explained. The electrician is not expected back for several days, giving her time, and she expects Nisiqtu to believe her account that the men caused the accident themselves. The imagined cover story makes the attack more than an impulsive assault: Pirjo is preparing both to keep the men captive and to shape what others will think happened. She then cuts separate lengths of cable and winds one around Assad’s thumb and another around Carl’s left ankle. At the junction box, she opens the connections carrying direct current from the solar panels to the inverter. An electrician and Shirley had unknowingly shown her how the system could be used to inflict pain: in weak sunlight the current would sting, but stronger sunlight would make it more dangerous and could eventually kill them. Pirjo loosens the cable lugs with an insulated screwdriver, setting the trap so that its force depends on the light reaching the panels.

The Current and Its Effects

Once Pirjo connects the men to the solar system, the danger fluctuates with the sunlight. Carl experiences the current first as a bubbling sensation through his body, then as muscles contracting and locking, even in his eyelids and nostrils. His heart skips beats, flashes interrupt his thoughts, and his lungs struggle; as more light comes through the clouds, the current grows stronger. He can barely register Assad beside him, remembering their shared restraint only in fragments.

The current weakens abruptly. Carl sees a trace of smoke and then Assad’s bound arm twitching toward the metal wall: Assad has pressed the thumb wrapped in cable against it, and the current is no longer traveling farther. The moment turns the apparatus against Pirjo’s plan, though it does not immediately free them. Carl later wakes on the cement floor, shaking and sick, with the cable cut into pieces, a wire cutter nearby, and the corridor door open. His ankle aches and his breathing is troubled, but he is alive; Assad has saved him.

Immediate Aftermath

Once free, Carl tries to steady himself with water, but swallowing is difficult and his head keeps swaying until he holds it still. His left ankle hurts as though it has been cut, and mucus catches in his lungs. Even as the shock leaves him shaky and sick, his attention turns to Assad: Carl thinks he will be all right as long as they can help his partner. He begins to feel better within ten minutes, but survival has not yet resolved the immediate question of whether Assad can be saved.

The Trap’s Reversal

The attack’s decisive reversal comes not from a planned countermeasure but from Assad’s limited movement while still bound. The same cable that makes his body part of Pirjo’s electrical circuit also gives him a point of contact with the metal wall; by pressing his wrapped thumb against it, he stops the current from traveling farther. The distinction between the men’s helplessness and Assad’s small, precise action turns the apparatus against its intended effect. Yet the interruption is only a reprieve: Carl wakes later on the cement floor, free of the cable but still shaking and struggling to breathe, and immediately understands that Assad still needs help. Their survival therefore remains uneven—the man who saved Carl is himself in danger.