Late one night, a dazed woman dumped out of a van wanders into a diner. She's disoriented and possibly abused, but the police officer who tries to help her winds up bleeding from the eyes and, you know, dying. As does everyone else in the diner. The woman dies too; in fact, she gets it even worse, what with her head popping off and everything.
The Fringe investigation discovers that the dead woman had a supposedly incurable disease that had gone into remission -- and then she disappeared for a couple of weeks. Not only that, but another woman with the same disease has also disappeared, and the Fringe team needs to find her before her head goes all Scanners too. Walter pieces together the reason for the mysterious remission: medication in the bloodstream that's essentially like time-release chemotherapy, but the release of it all at once turned the woman into, essentially, a human microwave that could be used as a weapon. Since microwave technology can't even properly cook a bag of popcorn, I'm not sure why anyone thought this would work.
There's a drug company pursuing unethical treatment experimentation, but Olivia's hardass questioning gets her nothing but a rebuke from Broyles, so Peter steps in to bargain the location of the drug lab from Nina Sharp, who would love nothing more than to see one of Massive Dynamic's competitors go down the toilet. Walter synthesizes a vaccine that saves the patient's life, and Olivia manages to not get fired for very publicly taking down the head of the drug company.
Happy birthday, Olivia. Oh, by the way, she's on edge because her abusive dad disappeared from her life when she was nine, after he beat her mother particularly badly one night and Olivia unsuccessfully tried to shoot him to death. He always sends a card on her birthday, reminding her he's still out there. But she doesn't get one today! Oh, except then she totally does.
Wilford, Massachussetts. It's late at night. A white van comes careening down a deserted street and screeches to a halt. Two people in Hazmat suits get out and open the rear doors. They unceremoniously toss a woman out into the street, where she hits the pavement hard. Aw. Does anyone else miss frosh week at university?As the van peels out, the woman struggles to get to her feet, and then staggers down the middle of the street, until she makes her way over to Holly's Diner. She wanders in, and we get our first glimpse of her in the light. She looks kind of like Eliza Dushku, only really tired and beat up. She makes her way to a seat at the counter, where a dude asks her if she wants a menu. She responds by coughing weakly.
He asks if she's OK, and seems to think whatever's wrong with her can be cured by "some wicked good vegetable soup." Heh. I love Massachusetts. Ten bucks says this guy's listed in the credits as "Sully." She nods, and the counter guy heads back to the kitchen to order the soup. The cook says, "Onion?" and Sully says, "No, vegetable. No one likes the onion." Sounds like a throwaway line, but it'll pay off later. Sully also asks the cook to call "Marty," because a woman out front might be in trouble and need some help.
The woman's fidgeting at the counter. Her hands are a mess of scars and sores. Sully comes back and drops off the soup, and then brings her some crackers, and, noticing her hands, starts rambling on about eating too many crackers when he was a kid and spoiling his appetite, and maybe he should worry about sending her completely off the deep end with this moronic story of his. He asks about her hands, and she hesitates, so he quickly says it's none of his business. "I'll leave you alone if you like," he says, but her hesitation is because she can't remember.
That's when Marty, a cop, comes in, complaining that he was "at Thurbers," which I'm going to assume is an all-night pornography store, like SORRY TO BOTHER YOU, OFFICER. Sully indicates the woman at the counter with a flick of his head, so Marty orders a soda and sits down. He asks how she's doing, if she's from the area, but her vegetable soup is much too wicked good for her to answer right away. "I know I was born in Boston," she says. He asks her where she lives now. "I don't remember," she says. "They... they did things," she adds, haltingly, and he asks who she's talking about. "I don't know," she stammers. She seems to be getting increasingly agitated, and says they gave her a red medicine. Marty asks what the red medicine was, and she, starting to sound angry, says, "I don't know. They didn't tell me," she says. There was also a blue medicine, she says, and then she babbles about how they confused her and hurt her.
"I think you should come with me, I can help you," says Marty, but the woman gets very agitated, very quickly, and he winds up handcuffing her behind her back, against the counter, which is really going to help her mood. He radios that he's got a "5150" -- isn't that a Van Halen album? -- and wants dispatch to make sure that "Hannah" is at the detachment. What about her sisters? This is when all hell breaks loose. Sully doubles over in agony (for some reason (Marty calls him "Ben." It's SULLY, dammit!), and within seconds, all the diner customers are in the same boat. And by "boat," I mean "excruciating pain that involves bleeding from the eye sockets." "What the hell is this?" yells Marty, and seconds later he's screaming in pain too, and bleeding, and he collapses on the counter. There's blood and corpses everywhere, which isn't that bad when you consider that this is what most Boston bars looked like after the Patriots lost in the Super Bowl last year. The woman, shrieking, is also bleeding from the eyes, and she backs up against the storefront window. And from outside, there's an explosion of blood that splatters the door of Holly's Diner. At which point, my two-year-old daughter, who we thought was asleep whilst cuddling with her mother in bed, pointed at the television, at the splatter of blood from the head on the door, and said, "Mommy, owie." Yeah. We're not very good parents.
So presumably the day the Fringe team is setting up outside, or at least Peter and Olivia are; Walter is wandering around and humming at a transformer on an electrical pole, until Olivia snaps at him to stop it. She asks Peter if he doesn't find that annoying, and instead of saying, "Everything my father does I find annoying," Peter says Walter falls asleep by reciting pi to the 101st digit, so this is comparatively soothing. Walter starts humming again, and Olivia snaps at him again, all someone-pissed-in-my-cornflakes angry.
"I thought it was in my head," he says smiling, and then rambles on about how "nothing sings like a kilovolt." Well, except for Lemmy. Peter wants to know what's on Olivia's mind, like I guess it's only OK for him to bitch about everything non-stop, and Olivia just shrugs and says she has a short fuse today. Walter starts to extemporize about it, and Peter shuts him up as they cross the street where we see the entire corner of the building containing Holly's Diner has been screened off.
Broyles is already there, naturally, and he tells the team, as they stand outside looking in at all the Hazmat suit-clad investigators that the incident happened about six hours ago, and everyone in there is exhibiting high levels of radiation.
One woman in particular, the one in handcuffs, is Emily Kramer, who went missing two weeks ago and hadn't been seen until tonight. "You think she was a runaway?" asks Olivia, and Broyles says her parents say no, that Emily was happy and excited about recently being accepted into a master's program. Excited? She was positively radiant! In fact, Emily's body has three times as much radiation as the rest. "You're saying she was the source," says Olivia, which turns out to be true, but not really what Broyles is saying. But investigating is all about jumping to conclusions, isn't it?
Walter's chomping at the bit to get in, so all the Fringe team need are the white suits. They walk in, and we can see flecks of dark matter spattered in the dried blood on the door. Yeah, that would be brain, wouldn't it? On a stretcher is a blue bodybag that Walter unzips, and the horrified reaction of the squad indicates that wasn't a great idea. "There's no head," complains Peter, like who hasn't seen a headless body before? Walter says she was sick, probably with Bellini's lymphocemia, judging from the striped bruising on her neck and upper arms, and rash on her torso. Peter translates for Olivia: it's an irreversible auto-immune disease in which the body destroys its own organs and muscles. "Meaning it's fatal," says Olivia, who I can't believe isn't a doctor herself with such amazing insight.
But Walter says the disease seems to be in remission or even cured, because the rash is healing and the bruises are receding. "I'm going to hate myself for asking this, but how do you cure a disease that's incurable?" says Peter. Walter says he doesn't have the slightest idea, although he did cure it in a dream once, with opium, but he forgot how as soon as he woke up. Well, given that it was a dream, I'm not exactly sure it's science's loss. As Walter talks, he's wandering down the counter, picking up the meat thermometer that all good eating establishments keep out front instead of IN THE KITCHEN, and -- oh, man -- jamming it into the ear of Marty the cop. "Ugh! Thanks for the warning!" says Peter. Walter reads the temperature as 121 degrees, which is "counter-intuitive" for a hemorrhagic tumour, and is more likely a bunch of over-excited water molecules. Olivia looks to Peter, who says, "He means the guy's brain was boiled." "Like a Maine lobster," confirms Walter. He asks for Marty's body and the headless corpse to be taken back to his lab.
Olivia asks again about how Emily's supposedly incurable disease was in remission. Walter says it's a question for whoever was treating her, which makes three questions, t
he other being "What happened here?" Thanks for clarifying that question, Walter. No one else was wondering about that until you said it. Still, Peter points out, that's only two questions. The third: "Could I get some of this onion soup? It looks delicious." The eyerolls from Olivia and Peter are clear, even through the Hazmat suits. Are we clear yet? Walter's eccentric!Olivia meets with Emily's doctor, Nadim Patel, at Patel Health Care, who's shocked to learn that Emily was found dead. He asks how, and Olivia says she's not at liberty to discuss it with him. He calls "emotional investment" with his patients an "occupational hazard," like that's not a red flag or anything, and says Emily's parents must be devastated, especially with everything else they've already gone through. Olivia asks if he has any idea how her disease went into remission. "Medically speaking? No," he says, and Olivia asks if he was giving her any kind of radiation treatment. He wasn't. Olivia says the circumstances of her death were very strange -- yeah, blowed up real good -- and her condition may have been a factor. Patel offers to get Emily's records, if that'll help.
Walter works on Emily's headless body while Peter whines and gripes about it the whole time, although I have to admit the prop grosses me out, given that there's nothing above the chin. "Couldn't you use a clamp?" asks Peter. "Of course I could. But I enjoy the company. Quality time, as they say," says Walter. Astrid as usual has nothing to do but stand around looking cute. Well, if that's her only job, she does it well. She smells something, and Walter says it's hyacinth, which is his "third favorite flower" and it's coming from Emily which means it's either a genetic mutation or she was eating flowers, or it's her perfume.
Olivia strolls in, and Peter shows her the ligature marks on Emily's arm, suggesting she had been held against her will. Or, Walter points out, a predilection for sexual bondage. "Scientific observation, not judgment. Some of my fondest memories..." starts Walter, and Peter practically pulls a muscle in his effort to get Walter to shut up before he gets too deep into that story, and we all owe Peter a debt we can never repay. Walter also shows Olivia injection marks on Emily's arms; she was being given drugs, but not the "enjoyable" kind, according to Walter. Since Olivia's looking kind of grouchy, Peter asks if she's OK. "Should I be?" she snaps at him. Peter looks like a hurt puppy. So did she escape? Walter points out that when it comes to experimentation, there's lab work and field tests, so Emily may have been let go to see if whatever was done to her was working. Olivia's cellphone rings and she just rudely answers while poor Walter keeps on talking ... he says he'll know more once they figure out what killed her, or if the experimenters try to repeat their results. Astrid brilliantly figures out that Walter means when they grab another woman, and Walter is such a master at reading people's body language that he's deduced that Olivia's getting a call along those very lines right now.
Charlie and Olivia head over to Acton on a four-hour-old report of a missing person, another woman with this Bellini's thing, Claire Williams, which means people with the condition are either being targeted, or it's the most amazing coincidence ever. As Olivia rings the doorbell, Charlie starts making all these "I get it" noises at Olivia, and she doesn't have any idea what he's talking about, so he starts talking about what's been done to this woman, "today of all days," and Olivia ignores him, which is wise, because maybe he could have discussed this ANY OTHER TIME. Then he wishes her "happy birthday" anyway. Olivia barely glances at him.
Ken Williams opens the door, and thinks the police being there means they found her, and they puncture that balloon pretty quickly. They invite themselves in and Ken looks at the picture of Emily and seems to obviously be lying when he says he doesn't know her, doesn't know anyone else with Bellini's, and then is practically sobbing as he talks about how the disease almost took everything from them -- although he's still got that nice-looking piano there, so cheer up! -- and then it was like a miracle: she started going into remission. "Please find my wife for me," he says, clutching a picture of her.
Which is a good thing, because without that picture we NEVER WOULD HAVE GUESSED that this scene is about her, strapped to a hospital bed being poked and prodded and injected by people in Hazmat suits. "Please don't hurt me," she whimpers, and this is really a lot less scary than my colonoscopy, so I don't know what she's crying about.
Watching from outside the obviously irradiated area is none other than Chris Eigeman. God, where's he been? Market dried up for wry talky comedies about the state of New York privilege? One of the Hazmat suits takes off her ... hat? Beekeeper's hood? while Chris looks at still photographs of bloody disintegration at Holly's diner. "The last one was a test. This one counts," he says, and asks if Claire is a candidate. The woman nods and says she's an even better one.
Back at the lab, Walter's demonstrating what happened at the diner, and to do so he's dressed up a papaya -- the "friendliest of the fruits," he says -- like Mr. Potato Head, and he sticks him under a glass lid and holds some thingy and pushes a button, which makes the papaya trickle juice from his eyes, and then explode ("goo-ification," Walter calls it), startling everybody, even Jean, who moos, because oh, yeah, the stupid lab still has a stupid cow there for some reason. Walter mumbles mumbo-jumbo about his thingy shooting microwaves at the papaya, stirring up its molecules, making them vibrate, exactly the way a microwave cooks food (so the papaya is still cold in the middle?). Peter calls Emily the microwave, and Astrid wants to know what killed her. Maybe someone put metal in her mouth and turned her on? After Walter unsuccessfully tries to convince Olivia to let him demonstrate on some "expendable gerbils" (what other kind of gerbils are there?) Walter reveals that he found radioactive caplets of strontium-90 in Emily's blood, which he thinks were supposed to be a time-release to treat her Bellini's, but then was injected with something that made the caplets release all at once, frying everyone in Holly's diner, as well as making her own head explode like a pimple on prom night.
Olivia wonders if Dr. Patel would have access to these sorts of isotopes, which Peter doubts, because they're rarely used and strictly regulated, like Peter is a walking encyclopedia, isn't he? He asks if Olivia thinks Patel had anything to do with it, and Olivia's not sure but points out that eighty-three per cent of kidnap victims know their abductor. She elects to go see Emily's parents, and Peter decides to tag along, and Walter asks Peter to pick up some cotton candy. "Blue, not pink!" God, make Astrid go get it. She's not going on any trips. She doesn't get to go in the field. Give her something to do other than hang around and wonder when Walter's going to jab another syringe into her neck.
Olivia and Peter pull up at Emily's house, and Peter starts talking about the common human experimentation theme they've been seeing in their cases lately. "What if these aren't just experiments? What if someone's preparing for something?" asks Peter. I think he's just angling for some impending-apocalypse sex from Olivia.
She doesn't answer. The two of them watch as other vehicles pull up, discharging people in black, carrying food and flowers. Peter figures they should come back later. "Before or after they do to Claire Williams what they did to Emily Kramer?" grouches Olivia. Well, BEFORE, obviously! Peter points out this is a wake, and Olivia leaves him in hers as she sneers at him and gets out of the car and heads for the front door.
Once inside, Olivia looks around the house full of mourners and makes a beeline for the stairs to the second story, a mortified Peter reluctantly following
her upstairs and into Emily's bedroom, and Olivia tells him to quit moaning and help look for leads. Emily's mom bursts in and, rather understandably, wants to know what the hell they're doing in there.Olivia says they're from the FBI and that another girl's life is at stake, and mentions Claire Williams, and the mother's all, "Claire? What happened to Claire?" And Olivia and Peter would have missed all this had Olivia managed to sneak out like she snuck in.
Emily's mom shows them Emily's journal, which her therapist encouraged her to keep, and says Emily and Claire knew each other because they had the same disease. Tucked in the journal is a picture of Emily with Claire and Ken Williams. Well, whaddaya know?
Back at Ken's place, a pissed Olivia wants to know why he lied to them about knowing Emily. So he tells them the story of how Emily and Claire met while being treated for the disease, and shared horror stories of the pain they suffered, and became friends, bonding over being abandoned by the medical establishment, because with only three thousand people with the disease, it's not worth it to the drug companies to look for a cure. So a group of sufferers pooled their resources and started trying radical therapies doctors wouldn't touch. "Three months later, we found a cure," he says. "Time-release radioactive capsules," says Peter. Olivia doesn't understand why he lied about it, and Ken, near tears, says he was worried they'd stop it from going on. Olivia says they'll need to know the names of the other patients involved. Ken says he knows some; the rest will have to come from Dr. Patel. Olivia's all, "Great! Who isn't lying to me today?" Peter asks Ken for a sample of the medication.
Elsewhere, Claire's dozy, while her Hazmat-suited captor readies a syringe full of red fluid. "Is that my Bellini's medication?" Hazmat doesn't say anything. Claire says she just wants to know what they're doing to her, and Hazmat says they know all about her disease. "We know that this makes you better," says Hazmat, injecting the red stuff into her IV bag, where it billows and blooms like bloodflowers in the saline solution. Then she readies a blue IV drip. "But this ... this will make you special." Claire starts sobbing.
Olivia slaps some photographs of Holly's Diner down in front of Dr. Patel. Crime-scene photographs, I mean, not homey pictures taken for the menu. She says when she was talking about the unusual circumstances surrounding Emily's death, this is what she was talking about. And there's no use playing dumb, because Ken Williams told her everything. "I'm not responsible for this. Not this," protests Patel. He says all he does is give them updates. Olivia's all, "they"? Intrepus, says Patel. "The drug company?" asks Olivia, and all I can say is maybe the company should have looked harder to come up with a name that doesn't have "pus" in it. He tries the old cliché of telling her she has no idea who she's dealing with, but Olivia's unmoved. She tells Patel she needs a name at the company, and he turns around and starts rifling through a filing cabinet. When he gets to the G-section, I presume, he pulls out a gun without Olivia noticing or OTHERWISE BEING AT ALL CAREFUL and holds it to his chest for a moment, before turning around and sticking it in Olivia's face. She's pretty quick on the draw herself though, and they shout at each other, with Patel saying he was only giving updates. "You want a name? Dave Esterbrook," he says, and puts the gun under his chin. "No!" yells Olivia, not in slow motion for some reason, and Patel fires. Know what the last thing to go through his mind was before he died? A bullet.
Seeming somewhat dazed, Olivia wanders over to her station in the federal building and shuffles through some mail. Nearby, Charlie says, "I found him," and shows her information on David Esterbrook, who is of course Eigeman, and Charlie says this guy is head of pharmaceutical research at Intrepus, and was the main guy responsible for a lobbying campaign that allowed Intrepus to dig into such fun areas as prenatal gene therapy, human-animal hybridization (oh, yuck!) and viral warfare.
As luck would have it, Esterbrook's in town today, speaking at a humanitarian aid forum. Charlie cautions her that Esterbrook's not exactly likely to confess. "I wanna see it in his eyes, Charlie," says Olivia. "I want to know it's him."
Which is how Olivia comes to introduce herself as "Amanda Bennett, Baxil," to Esterbrook, and behaving like a groupie backstage at a Rolling Stones concert, gushing about his work, and then bitching about "moral-based restrictions that lawmakers put up in the name of public policy" that is the only thing preventing people from doing truly visionary work; that and needing money. Esterbrook's eating it up, but given that Olivia's a knockout, she probably doesn't really need to sell it quite so hard.
Esterbrook decides to let her in on a little secret: "It isn't about the money. It is about the resolve," he says, which is all Olivia needs to hear for her newfound "I need to see it in his eyes" routine, which, if she were as good at it as she seems to think, would have alerted her that something was up with John, no? So she starts spitting fire at him, admitting she doesn't work at Baxil but does know a colleague of his, Dr. Nadim Patel, who's now dead. Esterbrook says he's sorry to hear that. "Not half as sorry as I was to watch it happen," she snaps. Yeah, you win, Olivia. Geez. She reveals herself as Agent Dunham, and then Esterbrook calmly threatens her ability to someday have a family, which seems to creep her out just a little bit. He puts down his wine and walks away, leaving Olivia to ponder whether her three imaginary boys and girls are safe from him.
Elsewhere, Broyles is getting off an elevator when his cellphone rings. He answers it and listens for a moment before sighing. "When?" he says. Yeah, that's not going to be good for Olivia.
Sure enough, over at Harvard, Broyles catches up with Olivia -- and when I say "catches up" it's not like he has to run or anything; he just walks normally for anyone eleven feet tall. He lambastes her for going after such a high-profile murder subject in a public situation like that, reminding her that their unit is controversial at best, so they need to be perfect. You need to get back up on that wire! She of course responds with the usual "excuse me for getting results" routine and says she doesn't give a damn about politics. Broyles says that's her problem, and now his problem: "You think you're the only one who wants to find Claire Williams?" He says she allowed her feelings to dictate her decision-making in this case, and as such has endangered not just Claire Williams but everything the Fringe team does, etc., etc. When he walks about, she asks him if there's anything else he wants her to run past him. "Not anything. Everything," he says.
Back at Intrepus's hospital of horrors, Hazmat's putting a huge hairless rat in the room with Claire, who, judging from her whimpering reaction, doesn't take too kindly to mice. Hazmat monitors Claire from outside, and Esterbrook shows up, who you'd think might be staying away now that he knows the FBI are looking at him. He asks if the radioactive capsules are ready and can be triggered remotely, and the answers are both yes, so he's going to call the client and schedule delivery. Meanwhile, in the room, the rat has decided to get up close and personal with Claire and crawls under her bedsheet and scurries about, until suddenly it kinda pops (all we see is the sudden, spreading bloodstain). "What's happening to me?" she says.
Back at the Harvard lab, Olivia's whining that she can't get anything on Esterbrook, who doesn't have so much as an unpaid parking ticket. Well, maybe if the meter maid had ever just looked in his eyes like you did she would have known he was guilty. Peter says the good news is that Walter may have isolated the compound in Emily's blood that ... oh, does it really matter? The bad news is that Walter was distracted by the unic
orn running through the lab, says Peter, who's chagrined to see that Olivia did not immediately double over in uncontrollable laughter, and he just stands there until finally Olivia says, "Anything else? Got any more jokes?" all sarcastic, really funny. Let's take it from the top, Peter.He's got his feelings hurt, and he's had enough of Olivia's wild mood swings, and says there's been something wrong all day (this is all on one day?) and he whines that he wants to find Claire as much as Olivia does, and she apologizes, genuinely, and then they kind of stare at each other for a few moments, before she launches into a story about her stepfather who used to beat her mother, who just lived with it. "One day he beat her real bad, broke her nose. I was nine," she says. Her stepfather took off in his car, and then came back, so Olivia went for the gun that he kept in the drawer near his bed. "When he opened the door, I pulled the trigger. Then I pulled it again. And I can still see his face, almost daring me to finish. But I couldn't," she says. Wuss! She says her stepfather went to the hospital, and survived. "And then one night he just slipped away. We never saw him again." She says she blames herself because she should have finished him off -- you were nine, Olivia! -- and even though rationally she knows he's not responsible for every bad thing that happens, he is responsible for some of them. And every year he sends her a card on her birthday, just to let her know he's still out there. "It's your birthday today," says Peter, showing off that big brain of his.
After a moment, he leans forward and says, "No man is untouchable, Olivia." He's not talking about Olivia's daddy but Esterbrook, and suggests talking to Nina Sharp, because Massive Dynamic has three pharmaceutical divisions that are in competition with Intrepus. "Their annual budget for corporate espionage could feed a mid-sized nation." He's guessing Nina would have something on Esterbrook. Olivia doubts that Nina would even admit to having something on Esterbrook if it meant owning up to highly illegal corporate espionage. She's just going back to looking on her computer, and also trying to figure out what to do with her fantasy football team, because both her starting and backup quarterbacks have byes.
Peter gets up and heads out the door, letting his dad know he's going out. "Oh, Peter! To be honest I didn't even know you were here!" says Walter, which I think is code for "You weren't hovering around making snide remarks the whole time!"
Over at the Chariot Equestrian Center, Peter jogs up to see Nina Sharp, just finishing a ride. He goes to introduce himself, but Nina already knows who he is (which we knew, too). "You're not the only one who's done their homework," she says, as if Peter ever did or does homework. She asks if "Ms. Dunham" knows he's there, and he says no. She suggests they go for a walk.
After he fills her in, she wants to know if he's got anything to substantiate his "bold claim" that Intrepus is illegally using human subjects in drug trials. "Would you put it past them?" asks Peter, which Nina doesn't answer, just shoots him a look, as if Massive Dynamic doesn't do the same thing.
They sit down on a bench, and Peter keeps pressing for info, figuring Intrepus would be doing it somewhere "off the grid," since they wouldn't risk doing it at one of their own facilities. Nina starts going on about how Peter looks the same as he did was younger. Except for the fifteen-o'clock shadow, anyway. Peter looks surprised, and Nina says he probably doesn't remember, but they used to spend a lot of time together, "some of it right here." Peter just looks at her. "Your father and I were ... quite close when we were both much younger." Peter stares at her, clearly figuring, but not wanting to ask, if she's talking about sex. Sometimes you can have a little more information than you'd ever wish for.
Then she starts rambling -- well, seems to be rambling anyway -- about all this information she has that is of no use. For instance, did you know that the Aymara people of Central Peru live on soil that contains a naturally occurring metal alloy that is potentially hyperconductive? Peter grimaces like he already knows where she's going with this. She says she also knows that Peter has conducted some business with these people and other tribal concerns in parts of the world traditionally resistant to development.
She gets all Godfather on him: she gives him the exact location, and in return she gets to come to him to return the favour someday, no questions asked. Peter stares at her.
Over at the Harvard lab, Walter sniffs the air, and says, "Do you smell that?" to Astrid, who says she does, and time a little warning might be nice, and I'd like to point out that this lab contains a live COW, so I don't think Astrid can be super-fussy about smells. But Peter's not talking about his silent-but-deadlies but methyleugenol, which gives hyacinths their aroma. As Peter comes in, in time to correct his dad calling Astrid "Asterisk," Walter says the methyleugenol is what the women were injected with to make all the radioactive capsules burst at once. Then Walter figures a bonding agent will interfere with the process, and now it won't take him long to make the cure. Peter goes to find Olivia to tell her the good news. She's out sitting in the hallway, rubbing her temples. "When did this happen? When did this become the world we live in? Patel, Esterbrook ... these are the people we trust to take care of us," she says. Seems like someone who almost shot her abusive stepdad to death when she was only nine might already know that there are bad people in the world. Peter just says 5620 Stapleton Avenue is where Claire Williams is being held, and says radioactive isotopes have a heat signature that's visible to spy satellites, and he had a friend track it down at the National Reconnaissance Office. "You have a friend at the NRO?" says Olivia, disbelievingly. "I have a friend who cracked their control systems," he clarifies. She's worried about pulling the trigger on this if the information is bad. He assures her it's good (by saying, "It's good. It's good." Well, I'm convinced!).
Striding back into the lab, she's already on the phone with Charlie, ordering a full tactical strike. "We're sure. This is the one. We've got a visible heat signature from the isotopes," she says, and naturally this is one of the few times where Walter's aware of anything going on around him, and he starts to say that radioactive isotopes don't have a heat signature, but Peter shuts him up and shoots him a look, and Walter seems to understand what he's getting at, so instead he gives Olivia a syringe to inject directly into Claire's bloodstream. The jugular, preferably.
Charlie briefs the strike team, telling them surveillance teams have found armed security on the premises, which is in the southern part of Framingham. Charlie says they have to get a shot right down a small thermal exhaust port, only two metres wide, which leads directly to the reactor system. One of the agents thinks that's crazy, but Olivia says she used to bullseye womp rats from her T-sixteen back home, and they're not much bigger than two metres.
The strike team rolls up and busts in, knocking down doors and forcing white-coated people to the floor. A security guard manages to shoot an FBI agent in the leg (that's some loyal rent-a-cops Esterbrook hired) and Olivia shoots him a few times. Nice! Olivia's team meets up with Charlie's team in the centre, and there's no sign of Claire yet, so she heads down into the basement.
Hazmat (not wearing her Hazmat suit) hears all the commotion and slowly lifts the lid on what's clearly a self-destruct button hooked up to the equipment in front of her and pushes it, just as Olivia and the team arrive to the sound of electronic equipment powering down. Olivia orders her not to move, and then goes in search of Claire, who's slumped on the floor of her room in pain. Despite someone yelling that Olivia can't
go in there without the radiation killing them all, Olivia SLAMS HER SHOULDER AGAINST THE DOOR. It doesn't budge, and Olivia puts the syringe into an air-lock drawer, while yelling for Claire to come get the cure. Claire's in a lot of pain, and she collapses. Oh no! One of the computer screens has yellow and red bars on it, and they're getting bigger! No way is that good! Olivia talks her through it -- well, "yells" her through it is probably more accurate, and Claire crawls over to the door to get the syringe.Just as Claire grabs it, she starts to shake, and those yellow lines gets bigger and the static-y sound gets louder and Claire writhes on the ground, and Olivia is still yelling upsetting things like "You need to jab yourself in the side of the neck!" "Oh my god, my head!" yells Claire. Olivia's all, "less talky, more jabby!" and Claire's eyes have started to bleed by this point, but she manages to reach up and jab her neck, and things instantly start going back to normal. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the cure just supposed to have prevented the capsules from exploding all at once? I mean, since they were clearly already exploding, is this syringe actually neutralizing radioactivity? Is that even possible? I -- you know what, it's OK. Never mind.
And now it's time to head over to Intrepus, where Olivia strolls into a lab to find Esterbrook. "Agent Dunham. Apparently I didn't make my point clearly enough," he says. She tells him she thought he'd be interested to know that Claire Williams is safe, and he's all "What's a Claire Williams?" but Olivia says an employee (Elizabeth Sarnoff -- Hazmat) said he supplied her with the facility and equipment to turn the women into human weapons. Esterbrook chalks it up to a disgruntled employee saying just about anything to vilify the boss who fired her. So you won't mind coming with me to answer a few questions, she says, and he tells her he's got a law firm on retainer that charges more by the hour than she earns in a year. "I suggest you get them to meet you at the FBI," smirks Olivia. Esterbrook threatens to add "police harassment" to the laundry list of charges, and Olivia says she's still going to walk him out the front door in handcuffs for refusing to answer questions, and the press that she tipped off will probably enjoy the show. "You may not answer to me, or to the U.S. government, but you do answer to a board of directors," she says. Esterbrook swallows, and then Olivia bounces him off the table to handcuff him behind his back, so she might want to expect a police brutality charge as well.
Back at the federal building, Olivia goes through her mail again. No card from stepdaddy dearest. She heads up to Broyles' impressive, circular window-walled office that overlooks the room, and he crosses his arms and outright glowers at her as she walks in for a full seventeen seconds.
"I guess by now you've heard," she says, and Broyles is all, that you frogmarched a senior officer of a multibillion-dollar conglomerate out of his office? Yeah, I heard. "Quite a few cameras there," he notes, and Olivia shrugs and says, "The press. They always get their pound of flesh," and how nice to use the press and then slam them, Olivia. She's not exactly expressing surprise that someone tipped them off.
Oh, here comes the diatribe. "I understand that you think I acted too emotionally. And putting aside the fact that men always say that about women they work with" -- not to generalize yourself about an entire gender, there, Olivia -- "I'll get straight to the point. I am emotional. I do bring it to my work. It's what motivates me..." and it goes on like that, getting into the headspace of victims, makes me a better agent, etc. "If you have a problem with that, sorry. You can fire me. But I hope you don't." Then she just turns and tries to sashay out the door, like don't let your boss RESPOND or anything, Olivia. He tells her she's not getting off that easy. "I'll see you in the morning," he says, still glaring.
Meanwhile, Nina Sharp's listening to the radio while being driven somewhere, and allowing herself a smile as the newscaster talks about plummeting Intrepus stock and the corresponding bounce in competitors, especially Massive Dynamic, whose shares are up twelve percent. In her car, Olivia's listening to the same radio station, looking thoughtful.
Peter, carrying groceries, and Walter stroll up to their hotel when Olivia pops out of the bushes like a stalker and Walter thinks she's locked herself out again too, and Peter has to tell him that she doesn't live here, and Walter looks chastened as he takes the groceries from Peter so he can go in while his son talks to Olivia. Peter reminds his dad to use his own toothbrush tonight. "White for Walter," says Walter, slightly embarrassed.
Peter and Olivia sit down on a nearby bench to chat, and Olivia gets right to it: "I know where you got your information about Claire Williams." She asks what Nina's price was, and Peter laughs. "Nothing untoward, if that's what you're worried about," he says. Never admit anything! He tells Olivia that he's a big boy who can take care of himself. "You've been looking out for me, so I'm just returning the favour," he says. She thanks him. "There was no letter today, was there?" he says. Is this all still the same day? Olivia smiles and says there wasn't. Well, have faith. "Happy Birthday," says Peter. Olivia manages to stand up without kissing him, and tells him to get upstairs before Walter falls asleep in Peter's bed. Peter says he's actually done that before -- while Peter was sleeping in it. "Not something you want to wake up to," he says, leaning all close to Olivia, like she's going to be turned on at the prospect of sleeping with Peter while his crazy dad wanders around. They say good night to each other, not "kiss me, kiss me, kiss me!"
At home, Olivia walks in the front door -- and notices a card on the floor. It simply has her name on it. No address, no stamp, no postmark. The card inside is blank except for the greeting-card sentiment "thinking of you." Great. Now she's got to get him a card again this year!