Zoey heads to the prison to talk to her client, the Hot Terrorist. She asks for everything HT knows, because Demetri is missing. Also, prison has been rough on Hot Terrorist, and she’s in danger of losing her nickname. HT’s not going to help until she gets her hearing.
The Mosaic Task Force prepares for the meeting at Union Station. There’s some talk of the painting printed on the back of the note. These poor guys haven’t realized that if they were on Lost, it would definitely be significant, but here, not necessarily. (Of course, if they were on Heroes, they’d forget that there was any note at all by the end of the episode.) There’s also a discussion of whether they’ll just seal Demetri’s fate by triyng to rescue him. We cut back to Demetri, and we see that there’s a gun pointed at him, attached to some very complicated rig. There’s also a timer with just over six hours on it. Something clicks, and a lever starts to pull the trigger, then stops. This is a very complicated deathtrap.
OK, now we jump to the past, six months before the Blackout. Hot Terrorist and a British Guy are walking outside a building, and British Guy explains that she’s going to meet somebody who’s brilliant but difficult. They had to fake his death a while back, but if he gets unmanageable, she’s going to have to kill him for real.
As you may have guessed, that man is Dyson Frost. He says they’re still on schedule for October 6, and they’re just waiting for Lloyd and Dom to find their dark matter. British Guy asks if the QED is ready. Hey, you know how Lloyd’s been talking about that? The QED is the ring that we saw on the people who stayed awake during the Blackout! They’re bringing it all around!
Then Dyson turns on a TV to show the footage of the two of them walking to the building and discussing the possible need to eliminate him. He reminds them he’ll always be half-a-dozen moves ahead of them. We also see that he’s got a layout of dominoes – there are multiple paths, and as he says “The white ones chart the path of my escape”. So they seem to be laying out the idea that while the future isn’t set in stone, the possibilities are still finite.
In the present, Dyson returns to the deathtrap. He explains that if Demetri moves too much, the gun will fire. He explains that, years ago, he worked for “Red River”, and they engineered thousands of Flash Forwards. But every time they did it, they saw a different possible future. He explains time as a series of decision points, from which different forking paths emerge. Dyson continues to say that in 78% of possible futures, Demetri kills him. Interesting idea: “Once we’ve glimpsed it, the future wants to happen”. What Dyson is doing here is to follow the future he’s seen as much as possible, yet still allow for the possibility that both of them could live. Dyson leaves Demetri to stew in all that.
Mosaic is in position at Union Square. Mark’s on the floor, Janis is monitoring the security feeds, Stanford’s coordinating it all from the office. There’s a false alarm as a big dude who is definitely not Dyson approaches Mark, but he moves on.
At the hospital, Olivia and Bryce are wrapping up a procedure, and they’re covered with an almost hilarious amount of blood. Olivia asks the anesthesiologist about old-school techniques, because of Lloyd’s formula on the mirror in her Flash. Bryce is a little bothered that she’s talking to Lloyd again.
Hey, Zoey got Hot Terrorist her same-day hearing, apparently by claiming that HT has appendicitis. Thanks for that twenty-second scene!
Vreede shows up at the hospital to talk to Olivia. He needs to talk to her about a murder – the homeless murder from last week. Vreede’s been trying to ID the victim, and in his personal effects, he found a disposable cell phone. The phone from which Olivia got the text about Mark drinking in his Flash! Vreede asks if she’ll come to the morgue and look at the body, just in case she recognizes him.
At Union Station, a kid with a Superman backpack (Probably a reference to co-creator Marc Guggenheim’s new job writing Action Comics, though he was replaced before his first issue would have been released. And now he doesn’t work on this show anymore, either.) approaches Mark and says some guy gave him fifty dollars to pass the backpack to him. Inside is a cell phone, which rings. Dyson’s calling! He says he can tell Mark when and why the next Blackout will occur, but his associates won’t let that happen. He tells Mark not to speak, and as we cut away, he details his conditions.
Mark, following instructions, runs to the men’s room to throw away the phone and his weapon. He leaves the men’s room through a duct and heads to the parking lot. Then he gets in the car indicated, and the cell phone on the armrest rings. Dyson wants him to drive North. Nobody on Mosaic can figure out what’s going on and they totally lose track of Mark.
At the courthouse, Zoey explains to the chef that Hot Terrorist needs a CAT scan for her appendix, but the judge isn’t buying it. The judge calls it a frivolous claim and reams Zoey for abusing the legal system. HT tells Zoey that she tried, so she’ll give up her information. In her Flash, she heard that Demetri’s body was found in “Building Seven”. And then she says she has somewhere else to be, and the window explodes. She jumps out the window in the confusion.
An onscreen timer counts down Demetri’s life – two hours and seventeen minutes. Dyson gives Mark more directions. At the end of the road, Dyson gives him a compass heading and instructions to start walking.
Vreede and Olivia arrive at the Coroner’s. The homeless guy did not have dental records and his fingerprints were scrubbed. Also, he had a huge hippocampus, indicating he may have been a savant. Olivia doesn’t recognize him, and Vreede asks her to look through the guy’s stuff.
Mark’s on foot, Demetri has an hour and a half to live. When Mark reaches the designated point, he sees Dyson approaching, holding a pistol. He tells Mark that it’s time for the two of them to save the world, and then points the gun at him. Dyson tells Mark that he’s impressed – he’s the only one involved who didn’t want Mark dead. Then he tosses Mark a pair of handcuffs and tells him to put them on. Mark asks for a drink of water, then spits it in Dyson’s face. He knocks Dyson to the ground and we find out that Mark’s actually been running with a mouth full of gasoline, siphoned from the gas tank. Just so he can spit it in Dyson’s face. Mark can be pretty hardcore.
Zoey goes to Mosaic to tell them about Building Seven, and she’s freaking out. Janis runs a check on every Building Seven in the vicinity, and Stanford tries to reassure her. Meanwhile, Mark beats the hell out of Dyson, who finally says that he gave Charlie all the answers. He also makes the cryptic remark, “In the end, you’re gonna be saved by the lady you see every day.” Dyson notices an off-road bike in the distance – somebody followed mark. Then there’s a shot, and Dyson goes down. Oh damn, it’s Hot Terrorist! She sniped Dyson! A dying Frost says “I did what I did for a reason”.
Mark goes through Dyson’s bag. There are a bunch of photos of an old-time scuba suit, which he saw on the Big Board in his Flash. There’s also a weird set of blueprints that are on the Board as well. With 43 minutes left, he finds Frost’s car (which seems to be a rental), but no sign of Demetri. He checks the locations in the GPS, and finds a street name that Vreede used when describing the painting on the back of Vreede’s note – Mark sets a course for that address.
Vreede and Olivia talk to a neuroscientist, Dr. Ebing. His address book was in the homeless guy’s belongings. They think he might have been a patient, but the doctor doesn’t recommend him. No potential address book thief stands out in his mind, and I can’t tell if we’re supposed to trust him or not.
Now there’s less than five minutes on the timer. Mark arrives at the site, and finds there’s no cell phone service. He runs around the building calling out for Demetri. Finally, he gets a signal and calls Stanford. He lays out the scene, and Stanford tells him it’s Building Seven. They’re only numbered on the roof, so Janis directs him to the right building, and sure enough, he finds Demetri. Mark can’t figure out how to deactivate the complicated firing mechanism, and now his hand is on his gun while it’s pointed at Demetri, just like the Persian woman said.
Mark gets the idea that Frost gave him a clue when he talked to Charlie about One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish Blue Fish – he thinks maybe he should pull the red wire, then the blue wire. He pulls the wires. The timer’s still running, but now he can move the gun. He moves it up, so now it’s pointed at Demetri’s head. That’s not helping. When the timer reaches zero, the gun goes off three times. It misses! Demetri’s safe and all three shots landed in the photo of him on Frost’s crazy board! Yay!
Mark pulls Demetri out of the chair, which activates the sprinklers. The water wipes out everything on the blackboard. So much for the Garden of Forking Paths. Oh man, that was awesome.
Vreede and Olivia get the news that Demetri’s OK, so they stop for coffee. A rather intense guy with symptoms of Aspergers Syndrome starts to hassle her, and he’s none other than Gaius Baltar from Battlestar Galactica. Awesome. He insists that he’s stood behind her many times, always on this day. He announces himself as Gabriel, and says that his dead friend wanted to talk to her about the Raven River experiments, and even texted her. The dead homeless guy! Baltar runs away yelling “Can’t touch this”. He will either be awesome or really irritating.
Demetri and Zoey are reunited while evidence techs go through Frost’s warehouse. Mark shows Janis what’s left of the blackboard, the main thing Mark remembers was at the top of the board – all paths led to “December 12, 2016 – The End”.
OK, that was a good one. Next week’s episode airs on April 29 – will it be April 29 on the show? Regardless, it looks like there’s another Blackout. That can’t be good.
