Dante 01 2008

Deep in space, above the blazing planet Dante, the space station Dante 01 hosts a psychiatric detention center where six inmates live under a strict regimen of experimentation. The center is run by Charon, with the aid of the physician Perséphone and two guards, CR and BR. The setup is clinical, almost ritual, and the atmosphere carries a constant hum of machinery, artificial light, and measured voices discussing the limits of punishment and healing.

One day, a Neurinos shuttle arrives with a new scientist named Elisa, who brings with her a prisoner of unknown origin. This man wakes from hypersleep severely disoriented and unable to speak, a mystery that immediately unsettles the existing dynamic. He is immediately placed among the others: César, the uneasy leader; Lazare, his calculating right-hand man who has learned to hold his breath to survive the gas used to sedate them; Moloch, a large, violent enforcer; Bouddha, the reclusive figure who tries to show pity through extreme actions; Attila, the deranged anarchist hacker; and Raspoutine, deeply religious and convinced the newcomer is a divine messenger. It’s Raspoutine who gives the new arrival a name that sticks: Saint-Georges, the Dragonslayer, a label born from a tattoo on the mysterious man’s arm.

From the moment Elisa steps into the ward, a clash of ideologies surfaces. Perséphone favors a humane, therapeutic approach to the prisoners’ minds, while Elisa is there to push a controversial nanotechnological intervention designed to directly alter the DNA tied to antisocial traits. Charon quietly watches, wondering if science can truly rewrite the people housed within the metal walls. The tension tightens when Charon asks Attila to hack Elisa’s files to learn the scope of her orders, and Attila discovers the chilling truth: Elisa is authorized to terminate them all if necessary for her research.

The experiments accelerate the tension. Bouddha, feeling the weight of his own suffering, lashes out in a desperate attempt to alleviate his pain and tries to strangle the supposed miracle worker, Saint-Georges. The ensuing chaos triggers another gas purge, and Bouddha becomes the first subject of Elisa’s nanites. As the energy coursing through Bouddha’s DNA floods his body, he endures excruciating pain, yet Saint-Georges—acting, in his own view, as a purger of energy—reclaims him from the grip of the nanites. When he returns, Bouddha is steadier, and his newfound perception shifts: he sees Saint-Georges as a kind of healer, a man capable of miraculous feats, and he befriends him. The fight ends abruptly when Moloch charges at Saint-Georges, only for Raspoutine to intervene, inadvertently causing Moloch to slit his own throat with the weapon he wields. Gas floods the corridor again, knocking everyone out, and when the staff enters, they are astonished to find Moloch alive with no wound.

Before the staff can process what happened, César is injected with the nanites, and the fragile balance within the prison tilts toward fear and suspicion. Elisa’s confidence in her own mission clashes with Perséphone’s humanist ideals, prompting a cold counterpoint: the possibility that Saint-Georges is more than a patient—perhaps a catalyst who unsettles the entire system. Still, the doubts seed factionalism as César’s grip on authority weakens. Lazare and Moloch are urged by César to remove Saint-Georges from power, and in a brutal confrontation, Saint-Georges is stabbed to death by Lazare. But death proves temporary; the seemingly miraculous prisoner wakes again, more whole than before, and seizes Elisa as a hostage to reach the prison quarters, using her as leverage to slip through their defenses.

With Elisa in tow, the dynamics shift further. César endures crippling pain from the nanites, and Saint-Georges again offers a cure, restoring his ally’s body while the others scramble to understand the unfolding miracle. Attila returns to the fray, revealing a broader plan to destroy them all by triggering a devastating crash of the station into Dante, a gambit meant to unleash the fury of the prisoners against their captors. The plan unravels when Attila, cornered in a shaft, takes his own life, unable to see the plan through.

As the crisis peaks, the only way to avert catastrophe is a dangerous manual override, hidden under a trapdoor below the prisoners’ quarters. A fragile alliance forms as the staff prepare to move, but Elisa refuses to accompany them into the heart of the prison area. The others push through as a gas fills the hall, leaving everyone unconscious except Lazare, who watches, waiting for the moment to act. The shuttle is sabotaged by Attila’s meddling, and it ignites a catastrophic path as it escapes the station, tearing through the planet’s atmosphere.

The final act requires a sacrifice. César volunteers to descend into the heat of the cooling system’s chamber, wrapped in protective fabric, to reach the override and reboot the station. He returns badly burned and dies before he can enter the final code, the last embers of a wary leadership extinguished to save the others. In the epilogue, Saint-Georges—now an entity bound to arcane energy creatures within him—emerges in a space suit, hovering above Dante as he channels his powers to terraform the world into a livable planet. His body disintegrates into the cosmos as the transformation completes, leaving the crew to reflect on the thin line between salvation and destruction and the mysterious power that can unlock both in the minds of those who remain aboard Dante 01.