Previously on Helix! An unknown mutation zombie disease, going with most of the zombie/slash/outbreak tropes so far, including the one where anyone who says "People have to know what's going on up here" dies. So that's cheerful!
No jaunty music when we come back from the very brief previouslies, and mostly they're brief because the first two episodes were fairly concise and general to establishing setting, tone, and characters. Very minimalist, to go with the first couple of shots of water dripping from the tap. Very serene, in a way, water dripping is often used to indicate serenity, except it also serves to contrast Julia's experience a moment ago which was anything but. Julia's unconscious on the floor, as it turns out, or semi-conscious when Alan gets to her. She claims she passed out while taking a shower for standard decontamination procedures, and from her behavior it's hard to say whether or not she consciously is putting it out of her mind, unconsciously blocking it because it was traumatic, or lying through her teeth because it was traumatic and she doesn't want to think about the possibility of having been exposed to the black goo of doom. We do get very rapid cut flashbacks, but that could still be subconscious mind. In any case, Alan will walk her back to her quarters because it's not safe to be out there alone. He's not wrong, either.
Underscoring this is Alan standing in a corridor and tilting his head up at the ceiling as we hear banging noises. Alan, what happened to it's dangerous to go alone take this? Is this do as I say not as I do Alan? (Hint: It's always do as I say not as I do Alan.) He goes into a lab that looks like it could have been Peter's lab maybe? From the close up angles we're getting glimpses of faces and blurred everything else so it's hard to tell how big it is; whatever the lab was they had a glovebox and a light-up table (what honestly is the purpose of those light up tables if you're not using it for drafting or drawing or something else needing backlighting? does it help with looking bare-eyed at petri dishes? if any scientists know, please speak up) and various sample tubes. It's also one of the labs connected to an observation station. So, potentially any lab in the base. Fortunately we're not going to be here long, Alan gets off a hello are you in here and turns to look at nothing on the floor, or a place where something would have been, before Peter does the jump scare behind him. I feel a need to once again note that we're not seeing them standing next to each other a lot. Just in case anyone wanted to know why it's so startling later. Anyway, Peter's standing behind him looking even more blood filled around the eyes and not at all with it, though he doesn't move to attack. Instead he just sort of gurbles out "help me" and collapses.
Speaking of collapsing, several shots after the credits of Sarah including lip-licking and trembling hands indicate that at best she's nervous and at worst she's actually suffering from some kind of condition. She's also isolated and lit up with red at first before the camera pulls back to reveal the situation she's actually in: briefing the base scientists, or some of them, with Doreen on how things are going to go from now on. Basically they're to report to Doreen if they experience any kind of symptoms. This is not reassuring, either the implications about Sarah or the best they can do for the potentially infected scientists. One guy in particular is deeply unreassured, to the point of asking for the drugs that make it better. So clearly this guy's not a medical scientist who's done any kind of practicing then (or he is and he just thinks he can do that without being annoying.) Doreen points out that the wrong meds could do more harm than no meds at all, so first they research, then they medicate. I'm not actually sure if this is a sly dig at House (the doctor, not the show) or what, but it amuses me to think it might be. Backing Doreen up is a beefy looking security guard with a baton that may or may not be electrified. Heh. Whether because of the threat of being beaten into submission or because he's reassured by Doreen's assertion that as soon as they know what they're dealing with they'll attack the disease aggressively, he does back off. We'll assume, because it's television, that he can't hear Doreen's next comment about wanting to yell at them, that that's more for the benefit of the audience. Because honestly it probably is. Sarah doesn't look entirely like she's paying attention, which may mean she's tuning Doreen's complaints out or may mean she's barely clinging to functionality.
Over to Hatake and Ballaseros where they're talking about security doing constant sweeps and another two potentially infected being moved over to isolation, so there's at least one vector running around out there, probably two given the escapees we had last time. We already took care of Drs. Tracy and DeKlerk, so now is probably the time when people are starting to wonder where Dr. Raver. Never fear! That's what the Helix extras on the website are for, where we will be treated to the dulcet tones of Hiroshi Hatake / Hiroyuki Sanada delivering a Hamlet soliloquey in Japanese. Mmmm. Less mmm considering it's against the visuals of Raver potentially dying in the snow (keep in mind the monkeys), but still an element of mmm nonetheless. Daniel is worried about losing control of the base due to people panicking, which is not an unreasonable concern, but Hatake is more concerned with where Julia Walker is. Um? So much um. Especially since he doesn't seem to want to talk to her, just know where she is. Oh, hey, there's Peter! So that's one less vector to worry about. Alan's making snide remarks about the man Hatake has following him, heh. I have more sympathy for that because working a delicate operation of any kind, let alone epidemiology, is tricky enough without having someone staring over your shoulder or jostling your elbow at every step. Alan orders a number of tests I don't entirely think we're meant to hear, they sound like standard diagnostics, and Daniel wants to know how he found him. Well, Peter turned himself in. So it turns out all they had to do was stick Peter's brother out in a corridor and wait. Or at least I'm sure it feels that way.
Hatake would like an update on Peter's status, when Alan gets out of the glass prison clean room. Correction, the status of his sedation, which implies that Hatake doesn't actually give a shit whether Peter lives or dies. This may or may not be true, given later developments. It's certainly true that at the moment the show is trying to paint Hatake as emotionless and pragmatic at best, and the villain of the show at worst. Certainly they could work harder and have people with big arrow signs following him going This Man Is Suspicious, but that's a little ... too much. And Hatake does have a point that Peter has gone to some bloody extremes to run around the base before. Including, you know, kill a person. Alan protests that morphine is adequate but when Serrrgio gets in on the act he caves and asks if there's a more secure place they can hold him. With the attitude of I'm Not Giving In But. You save that face, Alan.
So, okay, sure, move him to the old base, because that's not ominous and doesn't have a long tradition of being the place of danger in horror fiction. Daniel gives us the run through on what's down here, mostly old labs and living quarters, and it's called Level R. It also contains maintenance, including oxygen scrubbers. That's not going to be important in any way later, just like the RFID chips. On the other hand the isolation makes it a good place to put hazardous material labs or storage and wait a second, a penny is dropping here, you put the most hazardous materials on the same floor as the fucking oxygen scrubbers? I'm going to take a second to shriek about that. I mean, I assume they're not in close physical proximity, but I'm still going to shriek at what a bad idea that sounds like. At least the ventilation systems for the one hazmat lab Daniel shows them, he says, are separate from the rest of the facility. Even so, I'd actually put the CO2 scrubbers elsewhere. Preferably behind high security. I'm just saying. Oh, and for extra fun, Serrrgio is pointing out that there was nuclear radiation of some kind going on here. It's only when he points that out that Daniel admits that they had fusion experiments going on in here, but they haven't used the lab in over five years and they test every six months. So they're being as safe as they can be but that's still a nervewracking environment to work in because, viscerally, everyone who grew up during the Cold War and after Hiroshima and Nagasaki is aware of what nuclear radiation can do. I wonder what Hatake was doing when those bombs fell. I guess Daniel has a point, though, that it's a good isolation unit to contain vectors and the infected. Which is funny because Hatake and Serrrrgio were the ones all about containing Peter, and Alan runs away with it going "Great idea! Let's isolate and contain everyone!" He's not wrong, though.
Back upstairs. Julia's having issues. They appear to be flashback issues given that she's, well, the TV is showing us her flashbacks and she's holding herself and behaving as though she's having sensory issues. And then hallucinations! Great. Are those hallucinations or fears? The fact that she comes out of it behaving as if she doesn't know whether or not it's real indicates hallucinations. Julia, honey, saying you dont' get sick to a mirror is not actually the same as not getting sick. I know you want it to be, but it's not.
Alan is delivering orders (Hatake's treating them like requests but they're totally orders) whent hey turn a corner and find oh look one of the infected doctors. Dr. Sulemani sort of staggers towards them begging for help, dripping black bile out her mouth and down her front? That's rather gross. And no one gets a chance to react before Daniel shoots her and sends us off into a commercial break. Daniel, with the gun. Was that really necessary? Peter applies first aid after the break with gloves on, so at least there's that but, was it really necessary to go in and dig out the bullet? (Hint: it isn't, always). Alan barks some orders that are more definitely orders this time to get her to a lab while Hatake dryly praises his quick thinking as saving her life, which Alan snarks shouldn't have been necessary in the first place.
He's kind of got a point. Up in Hatake's office Daniel defends himself by saying the situation was escalating, but I didn't see any escalation happening anywhere, did anyone else? She was staggering towards them, in another half a minute or so she probably would have tried to collapse on someone, but if they had gloves they had plenty of recourse other than shooting her. Notably, Daniel protests that he was trying to protect Dr. Hatake, which. Heh. That's a tangled web we'll get into later. Alan reams out Daniel about shooting his patients, Hatake claims Sulemani's life as his responsibility, Alan claims it as his as senior doctor in charge of the plague, I watch this a year or so after it aired and think Hatake has a very different idea of claiming someone's life as his responsibility than Alan does. Heh. Alan lays down the law about no lethal force, and says that Hatake had better outlaw it or he'll pull his team and come back in six months for the bodies. ... I'm picturing how that ends now. I don't think it would end the way Alan expects.
Speaking of things no one expected, Julia is trying to get answers from Peter about what he did to her and I have to raise my hand and ask, is no one recording what's going on in his hospital cell? Because she just outed herself as infected, although she could also make a case for it being an emotional thing given their histories. Peter seems to be trying to tell her something, so we'll have a nice long dramatic multi-angle wait while she slowly lowers her head to his ear. I honestly expected him to attack her again, or her to hallucinate that he was, but in this case the jump scare comes from Alan banging on the window to get her attention. It turns out he wants her for a briefing on how they're going to manage the level R thing, which is all well and good until they get to the part where they need to be able to tell who's infected and who isn't. And honestly, this is where I fall down on it all. What I would do in their case, what I think (once again: not an epidemiologist) they should be doing is simply isolating everyone who's even remotely been exposed, bringing them food and water and possibly conversation through a door for twenty four, forty eight hours, and if symptoms develop, then you know who's infected. It'd require locking down the base except for the outside team and maybe the security team, but at least you'd have an idea. On the other hand, I will also admit that may not be a viable solution because it would require a huge amount of tolerance and cooperation from the base staff, which so far has not been coming. Still, though. This is just asking for trouble. They discuss setting up a rapid response test, which involves synthesizing a pure form of the virus, which is actually viruses. Which are apparently not in any database existing, although that doesn't answer the question of synthesizing a pure form of the virus or what's in the vials in Peter's lab. Narvik A, it turns out, is most likely the liquifaction virus that killed the poor bastards filling up the very slooshy body bags. Narvik B is the one that turned Peter into a vector. We have some more of the standard "it'll take eight hours" "well you have four" trope, which at this point I think only is put into TV and film without an obvious outside deadline (it'll take eight hours" "Peter's not going to last four", for example) because we expect it and take it for granted. The infected monkey! The virus is being genome sequenced now, which sounds like a while you wait process but a quick Googling tells me that is in fact what it has become. The future, ladies and gentlefolk! Doreen will go back to working that, which may be their best hope for a vaccine, sure why not. Serrrrgio will go with her for her protection, which she says she doesn't need him and I wholeheartedly agree. But that's a story for a shortly to come up time. The commlink window comes up in six hours and why-couldn't-this-have-been-used-for-the-deadline number of minutes and Alan thinks if they have the data to send to Atlanta (CDC headquarters, again) they might be able to handle this. Well then. We have a final grouping of shots between Alan looking back at Julia, then Julia looking at Peter, and then Peter looking at her as she leaves. Oh you wacky guys.
Alan is giving out instructions for what to supply the quarantine area with when Daniel comes to reassure him (I doubt it) that Dr. Sulemani is going to make it. Alan tells him to tell the base doctor to keep her sedated (Propofol) and walks off. Daniel doesn't feel this is good enough! He wants Alan to know that she was coming for Dr. Hatake, and to that I say do you know something about this virus that we don't, that suggests she'd blame Hatake or think he could help more than the rest of them? Also yes, Daniel, you are overprotective of Hatake. Also slightly overmilitarized considering he's advocating for shooting all the infected. Alan takes this to the next step of shooting anyone who might be infected, to which Daniel has nothing but after a pause walks off with "The only reason you didn't shoot her was because you didn't have a gun in your hand." No, no, I think the reason no one else shot her was because she was staggering and begging, not running. Remember, Daniel. Now is not the time for fear. That comes later.
Over in the lab Julia and Sarah have nothing but false positives and a whole lot of technobabble that, if it matches up with any of the other technobabble, is meant to sound more technological than relevant and either isn't as grave or isn't as suitable as it could be. But eh, it sounds good, which is the important part. We then get treated to a hand tremble from Jordan, and if Julia accepts her explanation as being probably just tired (that's a hell of an exhaustion tremor if so and a strong indication that she should be sleeping, not doing lab work, because god knows what could happen with a hand tremor like that in the lab) it's because she's likely infected, herself. If she calls Sarah out on it she'll have to face it herself. Sarah offers to go get some more samples from Peter's blood serum and Julia rushes off to do it, for any number of potential unprofessional reasons.
Serrrgio is playing uninformed audience surrogate and giving Doreen a person to explain to that you don't cure a virus, you treat the symptoms and help the infected get better, and then you vaccinate the healthy population. It is, after all, a common misconception. That is not, however, a monkey. That is a sanitized lab table. After the break Doreen is inclined to confront Hatake, and Serrrgio is inclined to talk her out of it. Which, now we know why he was doing this. And, okay, even then it seems a bit suspicious. He wants to go around Hatake is the summation of his arguments, and he wants Doreen to do it for him. Given that Hatake has stonewalled, obfuscated, and probably outright lied to them, Doreen is easy to persuade. Once they get out there and see the monkeys, though, and not only that but once Doreen sees where they are and starts wondering aloud how the hell Serrrgio found them all the way out here in the ice, well. It's hard to say if this is when she gets suspicious or just when she decides to call him out on it. You have to admit, seeing a few dozen monkeys frozen in the act of running for their terrified infected little lives is probably unsettling enough to decide you're going to do something reckless. like call out a maybe corporate or international spy on his bullshit lies. Heh. He insists on the engineer front (it may not even be a front) and then he admits to something which also may or may not be true, which is that there are people in the army who think this wasn't an accident. I'm almost entirely sure this is several kinds of a lie, which is to say that the individual words are true, there are people, they work for the army although their first loyalties aren't to the US military, they think it wasn't an accident because they know Hatake and they know that this was a field test. Of sorts. But at this point I'm getting ahead of myself and the show.
Over in the quarantine zone Alan is caring for the sick while Daniel is attending to the safety of everyone else when he gets word that one of the escapees has been found on that level. Huh.
Over in the lab Sarah has figured out the test! Apparently she has figured out that you combine white blood cells with bio-luminescing wait you're testing for white blood cell count? Do you have any idea how general that is? Never mind. It's a stupid test. It is an incredibly stupid test, and it is only slightly less stupid for Julia to go testing herself to make sure she's not infected when what you're testing for is active white blood cells. Dear god. The clippiness of the camera cuts will tell us that this is a stupid idea, because usually that only happens when something dangerous is going on.
So let's go back to the escapee, who is apparently trying to take down a door with a fire axe and calling for someone named Duchamp. Alan and the security dude show up and suddenly he's turning around with the fire axe and, okay, I get why you're freaked about Dr. Sulemani getting shot Mr. Fire Axe dude but brandishing a heavy edged weapon is not a way to go about not getting shot. Yes? Yes. Not only is he protesting he's not infected while snorting black bile, he's swinging the fire axe at Alan and the security goon. Good job. Oh, that's a security Daniel, too. Good planning. This isn't the best lightning nor is it the least choppy shots, although some of that is on purpose. He's talking about a cure, there's a cure? That's the first we've heard of this although it would not be the first time in fiction that a shadowy organization created a virus so they could do something with (usually profit off of) a cure. The cure seems to be called Sudra or Sodra or a thing like that. Then the security folk tase the doctor when he seems to be committed to one direction enough that they can sneak up behind him, and down he goes. Alan orders him off to the fusion lab for an illusion of control either for himself or the audience; I have no doubt Daniel was going to take him there anyway. And then Alan gets to knock and reassure the mysterious Duchamp that everything's fine, the scary man with the axe and the black bile has gone away now. Oh good. Everybody seems to be fine, Duchamp is from a French speaking company and denies any existence of a cure. Then locks the door with his biometrics before walking off. That's not suspicious at all.
Someone is doing something with blood? DNA? A centrifuge? I have no idea. Ah, no, that's growth factors and sequencing, Well, that's all well and good, that's normally a very boring procedure except for the fact that, um. Wow. Those are some impressive growth factors. That's sort of the instant evil just add water form of growth factors, as it erupts into a black mass of tendril-y... hardening foam? In archaeology camp once we trained on excavating trays of "artifacts" in sand by exposing as much as we could and then packing the whole thing in spray foam that hardened to something like an airy putty consistancy, that's what this is reminding me of. Mostly it looks like quick-growth evil plants erupting out of the petri dish. Black and red, that's a good combination. Doreen just stares for a moment which, honestly, I can't fault her for and she also had to get her hands out of the waldoes, before hitting the KILL IT OH GOD KILL IT NOW button. Which is in fact red. Hey, look, it was pushing its way out of the case. That's distressing.
After the break Doreen and Serrrrgio are walking down a white uber-medical hallway talking about how dammit that wasn't supposed to grow like that and Doreen wants answers. Let's all take note of the somewhat isolated and conspiratorial blocking here, not to mention the white uber-medical setting. Though it's also true that there's not much else of a set out here. Serrrgio reminds her about the disappearing monkey and suggests she not tell Hatake. No, that's fair, but are you going to tell Alan? And the rest of your team? That might be a good idea, especially since you've already stated you don't trust this so-called army engineer. No? No.
Over in Hatake's office again Alan wants to know what the hell you have a cure? He's not so upset about it because, well, the source was a highly agitated and sick doctor trying to beat down a door with a fire axe. Or at least he isn't upset until Hatake tries claiming proprietary biotechnology at which point he gets cranky. I would, too. Proprietary technology only gets you so far when there are actual lives at stake. Although I have to wonder about what Alan thought he would get from Hatake's promises of transparency. He has to threaten him with newspapers instead of waiting for Hatake to talk to his board of directors. It works well enough that Hatake tells him SODRA (as I think they're saying it) is an anti-viral with a literally unbelievable cure rate. As in, no, I don't believe it, Alan, and neither should you. Alan asks him how many viruses he's tested it on, Hatake replies all of them, which I would take to be humor except Hatake seems to be one of those people who doesn't have a sense of humor that anyone is aware of. No, Hatake, you can't literally test an anti-viral on All The Viruses. Not without blowing your cover anyway. Alan will name a few viruses, Hatake nods, Alan points out that one of those viruses, smallpox, is only kept in the CDC and a place in Russia. Oh Alan, you sweet summer child. For those who want to know, yes, smallpox is supposed to only be kept in a certain few very specific places under heavy security protocols both physical security and biological, because supposedly we have eradicated it in the 1980s, and everyone is either vaccinated or unlikely to come into contact with it. This is also most likely a lie. There have been shipments of smallpox lost in the past, almost certainly a handful of countries have samples for their own experimental purposes, and a box of vials of smallpox was found in a cardboard box behind a door in a former lab in Maryland. A few months after the first season of this show aired, no less. I was morbidly amused by that. But the main point is, Alan, dear one, you should fucking know better. He is shocked. Shocked to find lethal virus testing in this establishment. That's not the shocking part, the bad news is that SODRA has a 75% mortality rate. I fail to see how that constitutes no damage to host cells but okay, sure Hatake, whatever, that does in fact rule SODRA out as an option unless people get desperate enough to volunteer to be human trials for it. We'll get back to that later as Alan towers over/gapes at Hatake. Heh. I like that blocking on that shot, that is a funny shot.
Up in the lab where Sarah and Julia are working on the non-functional test Alan comes up to get them and find out who's infected and needs to be isolated in level R, and who isn't and can stay upstairs. Not that this is going to help anything I just. Seriously. Who came up with that. They start separating in one big room, too, which is not the best idea if you want to keep calm. Then you get a lot of agitated people wondering which group they're in, even if Alan isn't telling them which group is which. The obvious thing is, the ones who get to go back upstairs are the clean ones. The other obvious thing is that what they should have done was to have everyone go into a closed room, tested, wait for the test since it doesn't appear to take that long, and then be escorted away based on their result. But no. They had to go with the one where everyone reads off each other's paper and gets agitated when they don't get the right answer. Good job keeping the population calm, Alan. I can see why you're a respected whiz at this.
According to the tests 43 are infected, and according to the dialogue that's almost 33% of the base, so, yikes. Alan wants to bring Bryce and Sulemani into the general population of the infected, because he hasn't yet been established as that much of a dumbass about human emotions. Yes, good, show a bunch of presumably infected people the shivering black bile spewing wrecks they'll become, that'll keep everyone calm, I don't think. He's not going to ask about anyone following orders either, he's going to go talk to Julia, who's sitting on a cot by herself. Which is both simple blocking and a bit in the way of foreshadowing. She praises his isolating this floor and says that people are settling in, to which he disagrees and says that people are scared. Really, and you're just going to help that along by keeping everyone in one room where they can see who's infected and who's not, and by bringing the worst off into the oh never mind. Moving on to Peter, whose vitals are all over the place and who may not live long enough to be helped by the vaccine or any treatment they can develop. Aaaheheheheeh oh god. Even he doesn't necessarily have much hope, says that grim side-profile look.
Elsewhere on the quarantine floor Daniel is carrying out Alan's dumbass order to mingle the extra sick population with the just starting to show symptoms, either because Daniel is not smart or because he's taking the position of fucking fine don't say I didn't warn you. Oh look, here comes Sulemani charging out of the isolation area like that rat from earlier and, like that rat, attempting to vomit black bile into the mouth of one of the security guards. This isn't going to end well, although fortunately the initial scuffle doesn't end with Daniel getting biled considering he no longer has a face shield by the end of it. We do get the dramatic quick cuts of the bodies she left behind! Seriously, you didn't isolate them individually? What the hell kind of security team, lab researchers, what the hell kind of sensible human beings are you? Not very. Off she goes running, and the security guards that still have their face helmets in chase before she can infect anyone else. See now would be a good time to shoot her. Echoes of Muldoon in the background. (That's a Jurassic Park reference. God I'm old.)
Sarah's still clearly stressed and locking up the samples. And almost falling over. Julia doesn't think she's fine, Julia thinks she's infected. Okay, being infected by Peter during the stockroom incident isn't the worst theory in the world, but she should at least be showing slightly more definitive symptoms by now, one would think? It's hard to get a definitive sense of time here beyond the date cards at the beginning of the episode, so we'll just go with relative dating like good archaeologists, which says her progression should be slightly behind Sulemani's and company. Julia does have a point about calling her out on her hand tremors and she is displaying symptoms of something, but Sarah is taking umbrage at the thought and implication that she would risk spreading disease by concealing an infection. So they both have good points. She takes the (let's all remember it's bullshit) test and it's clear. Julia attempts to apologize, I'm not clear on how sincere it is but hey, and then Daniel interrupts to ask about Alan and say he's got news about Sulemani. Because no one in this entire fucking facility is conscious of, oh, any kind of security protocols? Crowd control? Psychology of any kind? He's just going to blurt out that Sulemani's lose and she killed someone and then the troublemaker from earlier overhears and now there's a panic. GOOD JOB, DANIEL. Idiot.
Everyone screams and panics. Like you do when you're already wrought up from maybe being exposed and infected with a fairly terrifying virus for which there is no effective test let alone any treatment or vaccine. There's a mad rush for the elevators, which isn't good when the hallways are .. okay, they're not skinny? But they're not built to accomodate a crush of thirty-forty-fifty people if you count the security guards. Julia and Sarah are slower to leave, Julia in particular because by this point she almost has to know she's infected. Oh look, here comes Sulemani, tackling a security guard and vomiting black bile all over his mouth. For the sake of horror we have fast time here for Sulemani infecting the guard and Julia's flashbacks of Peter infecting her, and a slow turn for her followed by some close head and shoulders shots as she sees Sulemani and I think at this point we're getting nothing complicated, just her realization that she is infected and she can't hide it any longer. Sulemani is her future. To underscore that she's going to have a coughing fit now. Meanwhile in the crowd Sarah and Daniel and even Alan are trying to get to her, to Sulemani. Basically to protect their friends and close out this scene. Daniel has a gun but loses it in the crowd because it's that much more dramatic later when Alan delivers a perfect head shot to Sulemani's forebrain. Where the hell did Alan learn to shoot like that, I wonder. Specifically like that, not just learning to shoot, because if he worked in some of the places and situations he describes later learning to shoot would be a defense mechanism. You don't want to pick up someone's dropped gun and not be able to use it. Daniel takes the gun from him after, while he's realizing he just shot a woman in the head, a woman whose life he fought to save. With a look from Daniel of see I told you so. Yes, but the difference here, Daniel, is that she was actually charging and attacking people, whereas before she was staggering and desperate and scared and not actually trying to hurt anyone. Never mind. No one's pointing that out, Alan's trying to get Julia upstairs and not listening to her, though to be fair she's not being that clear until he looks down and sees the black bile on her hand.
Upstairs they go. Everyone's in civvies (except Serrrgio, who doesn't seem to have brough any) again, and Hatake is asking about Julia Walker. Again. Though in this case it makes a scrap of sense because it's the group of them and she's the only one missing. He does, however, get inexplicably upset, even going to the point of shouting at Alan till Alan says she's infected. Daniel suggests they seal off the level, which on the face of it and as Hatake points out sounds like a death sentence, but it turns out there's what Daniel thinks of as a week's worth of supplies down there. I really hope it's an actual week and not Daniel's idea of a week's worth of supplies, keeping in mind that these are not going to be rational people who divide up the food and water. Alan does admit, and it sounds like its' difficult for him, that he's lost control of the situation. The conclusion does seem to be that they're going to seal off the level, although Hatake is deeply concerned about Julia Walker gee I wonder why. And then Alan says when the satellite uplink goes live he's calling in the army for backup. Uh-oh. Serrrgio doesn't look too happy about that, gee, I wonder why.
Sarah is taking something with water, that's the only reason I can think of to pour a cup that looks like it comes out of a bathroom and drink it like that. Oh, no, there's the pill bottle, she hasn't taken it yet. And she's been crying! That's a good, subtle cry ho shit the fuck is that scar on her back. The plot thickens! So does the blood. No, I kid.
Alan is observing Peter in the room of all the blue peaceful lighting when Doreen comes in. He starts muttering about 274, and it takes a couple examples to figure out that he means people he's lost. The ten students of Legionnaire's disease, ouch. What's bothering him now is that Julia is dying, emotional, that's fine, and also that he killed someone with his own hands. Which is also fine, really. He is a doctor, not an assassin or a soldier, it's likely that the times he's had to fire a gun before he hasn't stopped to see where the bullets hit, assuming they hit any living targets at all. Doreen expresses her faith in him to save Peter and Julia both. He nods, the way you do when you acknowlege that someone's trying to make you feel better but it doesn't actually do much to change what you feel terrible about. But then he asks her about the monkey. Heh. Why she doesn't just say what she found out here, and about the terrifying growth just add water virus, I will never know. This is one of the parts I dislike where they make people keep secrets from those they should trust because of the sake of drama and having to recreate the results later keeps tension etc. That she would keep it from Hatake, I can see. That she would keep it from Alan and not tell him while telling him not to pass it on to Hatake, I do not understand.
Speaking of the whole don't tell anyone thing, oh look. Someone in military gear is putting a charge on a thing outside. And who have we seen running around in military gear lately? Well, there's only one main, so, yeah.
Julia comes back into the room where the alleged infected are, still with her black bile on her hand, and ceremoniously smears it on her white lab coat before pulling it off. Of course the act of pulling the jacket off rattles the vial in her pocket, which still reads clear. But... Julia's infected. So she races to the sample box that everyone said was the infected vials and of course half of them aren't green. She needs to tell someone! She runs to the phone and the first words out of her mouth are not in fact 'the test doesn't work' but 'where's Alan?' Idiot. I mean I get that she's panicking but the first words out of your mouth should always, always be the most relevant information. Of course it's right after she gets Alan on the phone that Ballaseros blows the satellite. So no more communication with the outside world for them. D'oh!
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