Three weeks after the “Horde” incident at the Philadelphia Zoo,[a] David Dunn, a superhuman vigilante coined “The Overseer”, and his son Joseph track down Kevin Wendell Crumb, a man struggling with dissociative identity disorder (DID) who has been nicknamed The Horde, at the abandoned factory where he is holding four cheerleaders hostage.
David engages Kevin’s superhuman personality, The Beast, in a brief battle until armed forces led by Dr. Ellie Staple intervene and imprison the men at Raven Hill Memorial, a psychiatric hospital. Elijah Price (a.k.a. Mr. Glass), who intentionally caused the Eastrail 177 train wreck David survived 19 years earlier and sees himself as David’s destined foe, is also being kept at the facility, but he is kept under sedation and therefore considered completely harmless.
David and Kevin are placed in separate rooms that contain unique security measures based on their weaknesses of water and light flashes, respectively. Staple explains that she believes that they suffer from delusions of grandeur and do not have superpowers. Mrs. Price, Elijah’s mother; Joseph Dunn; and Casey Cooke, a victim who survived The Horde’s captivity,[a] all try and fail to convince Staple that superhumans are real. As part of her final evaluation, Staple brings the three men to a room where she challenges them with explanations for their seemingly superhuman abilities that are not supernatural. David and several of Kevin’s personalities become confused and distraught, while Elijah remains catatonic.