Plot
Echo is booked by the young Richard as a companion for the outdoor adventure trips he loves. The two of them go rafting, climbing and archery together. After a little romantic interlude, however, it turns out that Richard was not only interested in Echo’s company. Rather, he sees her as live game, and before she knows it she is on the run from an insane killer who enjoys nothing more than hunting people – and above all killing them.
Echo escapes into a hunting lodge and, out of breath, drinks from a canteen she finds there. She also finds the body of a ranger, and a walkie-talkie on his belt. But the only person she reaches on it is Richard, who tells her that the water she has just drunk was poisoned. Echo leaves the lodge but stays in contact over the walkie-talkie.
During her escape Echo keeps running into herself. She sees herself running through the woods and speaks to herself. Her other self is the girl she was before her contract with the Dollhouse, reacting to things that happened back then (for example someone filming her on a college campus against her will).
Meanwhile Boyd is searching for Echo and meets another ranger. But it turns out he is not a real ranger – he shoots Boyd’s partner. Boyd fights the ranger and overpowers him. He interrogates him and tries to find out why he was followed and nearly killed. But the ranger can only tell him that he was hired by phone to get Boyd out of the way.
Echo, meanwhile, wakes up on a riverbank. Just before she regains consciousness she has a memory of a scene in the Dollhouse – but all we see is her, a few injured, bleeding dolls and a man with a knife. Richard keeps talking to her over the walkie-talkie; he is not far away and resumes the hunt. Shortly afterwards Echo meets Boyd, who is then hit by one of Richard’s arrows.
The two of them carry on together and make a plan to overcome Richard. Echo asks the doubtful Boyd whether he trusts her, and he answers: “With my life.”
Some time later Richard reappears. He thinks he has found them, but then Echo contacts him over the walkie-talkie. She swears to kill him and shoots him with Boyd’s gun. Only minutes later the two face each other with weapons drawn. After a short exchange they agree on a truce. They count to three and both lower their arms – only to raise them again at the same moment.
Richard’s arrow narrowly misses Echo, while she hits him in the side. He is not badly hurt, though, and a fistfight follows. Richard forces Echo to the ground, but she gropes for the arrow he fired and stabs it into her opponent’s artery; Richard bleeds to death. Echo returns to Boyd, whom she left by a tree, and is picked up there by a helicopter.
Meanwhile Agent Ballard receives new information about Echo’s true identity that makes him keep believing in the existence of the Dollhouse. He cannot let it go and deepens his investigation. One of his informants is introduced more closely: a young Eastern European man named Lubov.
Flashbacks also tell how Boyd Langton came to the Dollhouse and how he was then made Echo’s handler. It becomes clear that Boyd is still somewhat sceptical about the whole thing.
In this context we get the first hint about Alpha, the attacker of Dr. Saunders, whose face is disfigured by cuts after a knife attack.
It is explained that the attacker was very intelligent and skilled and needed only eight seconds to tear Dr. Saunders’ face apart completely.
After the engagement is over, Boyd is told that the supposed ranger he had captured in his van is dead. He is in the Dollhouse – and he did not die from the injuries Boyd gave him in the fight and the interrogation. He was cut open with almost surgical finesse.