“Pavor Nocturnus” is episode five of season two of Sanctuary.
This episode opens in a wrecked Sanctuary with Magnus lying on the floor, apparently unconscious. She comes to and a strange mist in the air coils and then disappears. Power is out in the Sanctuary and the phones do not work. There are holes in the roof and water is dripping in from the storm above. The place has clearly been abandoned for some time. When Magnus makes her way to the roof, she sees that the entire city is in ruins.
None of the others are present and there are no Abnormals in the Sanctuary any longer. Arming herself with a knife, Magnus makes her way into the city. There are no people, wrecked buildings and abandoned vehicles. Occasionally, movement seems to be glimpsed. The entire city looks like the type of place where you’d stumble across a newspaper with a headline along the lines of ‘The Dead Are Walking!’
One of the glimpsed in the shadows things attacks Magnus, only to be taken down by some people who finally appear. When Magnus speaks to them, they shoot her as well, and she wakes up, captured and tied to a chair. The leader of those who knocked her unconscious is Will, but a Will who has a scar running through one eye. Will wants to know who she is, as he says she can’t be Magnus, as Magnus died three years ago in the Battle of Buenos Aires.
When some more of the creatures attack, Magnus makes her way back to the Sanctuary and jury rigs a power supply for one of the computer to read her video logs. When Will arrives too, what happened is explained. A plague spread very rapidly, affecting both humans and Abnormals. Those attacked by the infected, which are called Palefaces, become them as well, and there are very few humans left alive now, the rest having turned into the cannibalistic Palefaces. The zombie reference was possibly fairly accurate.
Magnus has no memory of what happened in the intervening years. The last thing that she remembers is an expedition to Central America. She tries to find out more about the plague and how it started, and how to stop it. In the last case, she’s redoing the experiments she apparently originally did, which were unsuccessful. The infection mutates so rapidly it’s impossible to analyse. As Magnus tries to find out more, the mist-like apparition from earlier also keeps appearing and disappearing, and is a hint that something more may be happening.
The entire episode revolves around Magnus and Will, and the depressing future is constantly raining and shot in a colour-drained fashion, just to reinforce the negativity of the situation.