"The circus burned down and the freaks got out."

Seattle. Night. Original Cindy is tucked up in bed in the high-rise squat she once shared with Max, fast asleep. She is woken by the sound of a motorcycle engine being revved, somewhere very close by – inside the building kind of close by….

OC has hung onto Max's motorcycle all these months. That's sweet. So, on hearing the engine starting up like that in the next room, she is understandably a little perturbed and rushes out there – unarmed and thus completely unable to defend herself against whoever is attempting to steal the bike. It's probably just as well, then, that it's only Max: returned from the dead, escaped from Manticore, whatever you want to call it. Cindy takes a second to segue from 'oh my God, it's a ghost' onto 'oh my God, she's alive', and then rushes over for a heart-warming hug with the friend she thought she'd lost.

Max hugs back, just as delighted to see her friend. Because Max spent the whole of last season learning how to open up and let people into her heart, and just because she can't touch Logan anymore doesn't mean she has to regress back into awkwardness with everyone else in her life. Besides, Cindy was always pretty much the exception to Max's 'don't get too close' rule, even before she knew the transgenic truth and was cool with it.



And that's three paragraphs of recap for 33 seconds of airtime. Man, I'm wordy.

Later. Max sits perched on the edge of the bath and shaves her legs, muttering that she's been wanting to do this for months. So…Manticore didn't let the X5 females shave their legs? That kinda figures, being the kind of vain frivolity that Manticore frowned upon for their toy soldiers. But still. Cindy observes that they didn't let her do her nails at 'the Manticore' either, and Max grins that they've got no respect for the girly arts in that place. "I had to torch it." I like when Max and Cindy just hang out and bond, girl-style, and they don't do it often enough. Especially this season.

Cindy re-checks all the salient facts to make sure she's got them down right, and then puts all the pieces of the puzzle together to make four, figuring out at last that Logan is Eyes Only. At this stage, after everything that's happened and with everything Cindy already knows, I'd be disappointed in her if she didn't work it out. Max tries to blow her off, but Cindy knows she's got it right, the only explanation that makes sense. "You two were always doing stuff on the DL." Ain't that the truth.

Max gives in and swears her to secrecy. She's already proved she can be trusted, but this time it's Logan's secret, not Max's own.

Cindy: "It's gonna be a'ight. It's all good."
Max: "It doesn't feel all good. It doesn't even feel a little bit good."
Cindy: "Somehow, some way, it's all gonna come correct. 'Cause you and Logan just got it like that. Nothing can keep you two apart."

I usually don't like it when a TV show feels obliged to have the supporting characters telling viewers the same thing over and over, like they don't trust us to get it on our own. 'This character is a CHAMPION', or 'these characters are SOULMATES'. But at this stage in the season the eternal stalling of Max'n'Logan hasn't begun to get tedious yet and Cindy is just trying to be a good and supportive friend, so the show gets a bye on this one.

Cindy: "You're home, you're safe, you're strong; you kicked Manticore to the kerb for good. They can't hurt you any more. They can't hurt anyone any more."

Max doesn't look convinced, having spent too much of her life running and hiding from Manticore to be able to let go of that ingrained fear.

And, miles away, someplace in between Seattle and the remains of Manticore's secret base, Cindy's words are about to be disproved, as a ragged band of homeless young transgenics stumble their weary way through the woods. "If Manticore's under attack, they'll be looking for us to remobilise," reasons one of the teenage boys in the group. An X6, if I'm any judge.

There are five of them, a real mix of ages, right down to a tiny boy under ten. How this random group all ended up together as the entire population of Manticore's transgenics ran for their lives is anyone's guess. Presumably they just all ran in the same direction and then stuck together for mutual support, alone in the big wide world for the first time in their lives, without any way of understanding why. Max did that to them. She had the best of intentions, and of course was only nine years old herself when she first had to make her way alone in the world. But still. She acted without a so much as a thought about the consequences for anyone other than herself. Which is not to say that she did the wrong thing in removing Manticore from existence, but the way it went down was messy, and not a single soul was prepared for the fallout.

The kids see a light flashing in the sky and identify it as a rendezvous signal.

By morning, the kids have almost reached the assigned rendezvous point. A female X6 begins to express doubts, remembering that no one came to let them out of the barracks on the night of the fire. Which is a good argument, except for the fact that they were released from the barracks, albeit belatedly, and have no way of knowing that it was a rogue transgenic who did that, rather than their commanders. The X6 who has taken charge makes excuses for Manticore Command, so Girl-X6 offers another very good argument: that the guards were shooting at them that night, rather than an unseen enemy attacking the facility. Lead-X6 scoffs that the guards were defending the perimeter and that they took friendly fire, that's all.

Denial. It's not just a river in Egypt. I would say that this kid is rendered incapable of seeing beyond the narrow confines of his training by Manticore's brainwashing, except that the girl is clearly more open-minded and prepared to at least begin to question his interpretation of events, even if she isn't willing to argue the point too hard. He pulls rank, however, and continues to lead them all to the rendezvous point. Except that he actually turns them all around and starts walking off in the direction they just came from. Luckily for his imminent embarrassment, the camera cuts away before anyone can point this out to him.

We cut to a rustic bridge over a picturesque little river in the middle of nowhere. A bunch of military types lurk menacingly at one end, and the ragtag band of beleaguered refugee transgenics arrive at the other. "We're going home," breathes Lead-X6, and they all look so relieved about that it's almost heartbreaking. Because Manticore might have represented hell on earth to Max, but to these kids it was the only home they knew, represented stability and safety, and they've had it ripped away from them without either warning or preparation, without anyone in their lives ever once asking them what they wanted.

"X6-314 reporting for duty, sir," announces Lead-X6 to the shifty-looking man-in-charge, who we will soon become extremely familiar with as the new Bad Guy of the show. The kids aren't too concerned about the military types lurking so menacingly behind him, because they were raised at Manticore, surrounded by menacing military types. Therefore, they don't realise until far too late that this is a trap, and are gunned down in cold blood. RIP random transgenic kids, who never got to enjoy their sudden and unprecedented freedom.

Hardcore! And the tone of the new season is well and truly set. Last season, and for the decade before it, Manticore in general and Lydecker in particular were pulling all the stops out to find and retrieve their missing transgenics. This season, with every transgenic ever made now out on the loose, it seems the authorities are, instead of rounding up and recapturing them, aiming to simply wipe them all out.

Titles.

Random road in the middle of nowhere. As a car speeds along, we catch a snatch of a news report about a fire that claimed up to a hundred lives, with authorities reluctant to give out any details. The hippy couple travelling in the car are leaving LA, because it is 'full of freaks and weirdos and psychos', although the girl would quite like to go back. She's clearly just following her man, who has decided he can't stand LA. In obedience to the laws of television, they immediately encounter weirdo freaks of the psycho variety out here in the middle of nowhere, too. Alpha Male has to slam on the brakes to avoid hitting someone who has run into the road, and is shocked beyond words to see that the someone is a man with the head of a lizard, dressed in military fatigues and sporting a barcode on the back of his neck. Lizard Man sprints away into the woods, pursued by a whole pack of X7 clones. Stand By Your Man screeches, and Alpha Male decides to turn around and head back to LA after all.

Side note: I love how beat up their car is, the back stuffed full of all their worldy goods. This show is good at the visual post-apocalyptic details like that.

The X7 clones with their freaky ultrasonic communication continue to pursue Lizard Man through the woods. He takes refuge in a quarry, his lizard-skin and camouflage outfit enabling him to conceal himself with ease. He then completely blows this advantage by coming out of hiding in the mistaken belief that he can take them all on and win, forgetting the minor detail that they are carrying tasers. They zap him, and he is captured.

Those X7 clones really are freaky.

Seattle. Wandering back into Jam Pony after her extended absence, Max wonders what she should tell everybody, what with them believing her to be dead and all. Original Cindy promises to take care of it. Turns out, her idea of taking care of it involves standing in the middle of the room and loudly announcing Max's return from the dead to the room at large. Well, I suppose that saves the trouble of quietly explaining to them all one by one. A few random Jam Pony colleagues greet Max warmly, and Sketchy envelops her in an enormous bear hug while proclaiming this to be 'a joyous turn of events'.

Normal doesn't find Max's return quite so joyous, the old cynic.

"What can I say, Normal?" says Max. "Rumours of my death have been greatly exaggerated."



To show willing, she even offers to take a delivery without having to be nagged, but Normal is having none of it. "Your name is mud, missy miss. I've heard some lame excuses for missing work, but faking your death for a three month sabbatical is a new low."

Thank you, Normal, for confirming how long Max has been missing from the world.

"I did not fake my own death," Max snippily defends herself, falling back on a half-truth as the only excuse she has. "I…had a medical emergency."
"Care to explicate?" Normal is unmoved and deeply sceptical.
"A heart transplant," Max offers, which is absolutely true.

Normal's scepticism deepens, asking for proof in the form of a note from her doctor or prescription for anti-rejection drugs – and how the heck would Normal know the name of anti-rejection drugs off the top of his head like that? Enquiring minds would like to know – but Max goes one better, pulling up her shirt to show him the surgical scar beneath.

Cindy claps a hand over Sketchy's eyes; Sketchy pushes the hand away and goggles. Normal has the wind well and truly taken out of his sails and can only mumble in embarrassment about the nice big scar she's got there, which is certainly proof enough of a medical emergency and lengthy rehab.

"Yeah, well, enjoy it while you can 'cause it's fading fast," says Max, which suggests that transgenics don't scar permanently, that even significant scarring from such a deeply invasive procedure is only a temporary thing that eventually disappears completely. Her pager goes off, and she blithely helps herself to the phone.

"It's like she never left," sighs Normal.

Predictably enough, it was Logan who paged. Up in his penthouse, he is watching the news, a report into a fatal fire. Max gets Sketchy to put the news on, and instantly realises it is the fire at Manticore being reported.

"Only they're saying it was a VA hospital and the S1W burned it down," says Logan, sounding more than a little annoyed at that fact.

"Better people think some crackpots torched the VA than the circus burned down and the freaks got out." Max doesn't know what the S1W is, and has no problem with letting them taking the heat for something she brought about. Max really doesn't like taking responsibility, for anyone or anything; her slow maturity from this dismissive stance is going to be another recurring theme of the season. For Max right now, it's all just too big to deal with, so she prefers not to; by the time we reach the finale, it's actually quite awesome to see how far she's come.

"This is so bogus. Eyes Only said that hospital was just a front for that Manticore place," Sketchy remarks, glued to the news. Between them, Max and Logan are responsible for a lot of what happens this season. Neither one stopped to think about the wider consequences when they took action last episode, Logan when he publicised details about Manticore's secret operations so willy nilly and both of them when that final exposure was broadcast.

On the phone, in a very tight voice, Logan tells Max about all the people who are alleged to have died in the fire, that the S1W is being framed for murder. Max carelessly insists there is nothing she can do about it, and then thinks to ask him why he cares so much anyway.

Up in the Penthouse, we now see that a very pale and tense Blondie is lurking anxiously behind Logan as he makes the call. She provided him with a lot of support in the last episode, despite not being given a name – she isn't named on-screen in this episode either – and this is the result. Actually, a lot of people who provide help to Eyes Only end up having their lives turned upside down, sooner or later. Logan explains to Max that friends of his are involved, that they've given him a lot of help, but then backs off as she clearly doesn't want to know. "Look, forget I mentioned it. It's my problem."

He asks if she can come over later. Max evades that 'given the givens' she isn't sure it would be such a good idea. Logan tells her it'll be okay, that she needs to come over because he has some information that could be important.

Call ended, neither one looks particularly happy – the reunion they dreamed of has turned into a messy nightmare with a lot of other people caught up in the fallout. At Jam Pony, Sketchy is still fascinated by the news.

Sketchy: "The genetically superior walk among us."
Cindy: "They say that everybody died, fool."
Sketchy: "We thought that Max was dead, and here she is, good as new."

Max has to smile, but awkwardly, and uses the packet she took from Normal as her excuse to make a hasty exit.

Logan's Penthouse. Blondie is begging Logan to talk to Eyes Only and make him broadcast the truth. Now, Logan was quite happy to expose Manticore for what it was last episode, when he thought Max was dead and therefore had nothing to lose. It's a very definite narrowing of his world-saving focus since season one, because his exposure of Manticore has an enormous impact on a huge number of people other than Max, but it is for her sake rather than out of any greater concern for transgenic welfare that he's reluctant to expose them any further now that they are out in the world. He protests that he can't make Eyes Only do anything, which is a blatant lie, if only Blondie knew it. She very reasonably protests that the S1W are having the fire pinned on them because of the job they pulled at the VA office as a favour to him. Caught between a rock and a hard place, Logan has the grace to look guilty, but makes her no promises as she disappointedly lets herself out.

No-tel Motel. In some random dump in the middle of nowhere, Max's erstwhile breeding partner Alec has got himself set up with a busty blonde and a TV, apparently adjusting fairly rapidly to this unexpected freedom that he didn't ask for and didn't especially want. "This is cool, does it say how much you cost?" coos the blonde, fingering his unconcealed barcode.

"A lot more than you, sweetheart." Alec is clearly finding the TV far more interesting than the girl. Alec's fascination with TV will remain a subtle ongoing character trait for the remainder of the season; it's doubtful that he's ever encountered the world of mindless entertainment before. Actually this little set-up here is, as well as amusing, rather telling. He's a guy and has needs and all that, is clearly making the most of this unprecedented opportunity to indulge a little. But the girl is just a human, and not an especially bright one at that. She has her uses, but beyond that is incapable of holding his interest. The TV, on the other hand, with its steady stream of junk programming, he finds enthralling perhaps because it represents such a parallel to Manticore. He was trained to value and appreciate based on how useful a thing can be; finding worth in something because it is the exact opposite of useful is a new experience.



The girl simpers a little more about possible explanations for the barcode, and Alec humours her, enjoying the opportunity to poke fun without her ever realising it, and then hands her some crumpled notes to go get them both some food. His eyes haven't left the TV screen even once during the entire conversation. How he came by the cash is anyone's guess, but it seems safe to say that he's falling back on his Manticore training to get himself established safely and lie low; he has an advantage over his fellow transgenics in that he at least knows the gist of what happened to Manticore and why, even if his view of events last season came from the side rather than the centre.

Alec's little playmate exits the motel and wanders across the road to a nearby mini-mart. Nearby, a trio of homeless and increasingly desperate teenage transgenics hide in the bushes, eyeing the store with great longing; unlike Alec, they don't have either the understanding of their plight or the mental flexibility and street smarts to be able to adapt to their new situation and survive all alone in the world. They are starving, but realise that the humans in the store are not going to simply give them food, not without money. Regardless of this fact, the blonde girl snaps and decides to go in anyway, and the two lads meekly follow.

The girl has lovely long hair. It kind of makes you wonder at what age Manticore allowed its female transgenics to grow their hair out from that unflattering buzz cut sported by the youngsters; presumably when they reached an age where they could start being trained to operate out in the field, and thus would need to blend in more than those buzz cuts would allow.

The three young transgenics make their way into the mini-mart without anyone so much as batting an eyelid at them; this is a careless and run-down society. Seeing barcodes on the packaging, the boys wonder what it means. "It means its ours," decides the girl, starting to stuff packets of food into her clothing. Like the other girl earlier, she's definitely got more of an independent and adaptable spirit than the boys. This is a show that, as a rule, likes to present females as being more freethinking than males.

At this point, Alec's little playmate notices the unconcealed barcodes on the necks of the young transgenics and comments upon them loudly. Alarmed, they ignore her and make hasty tracks for the exit, at which point she realises that they are stealing a lot of food and raises the alarm. The bored guy minding the store suddenly starts to take an interest in proceedings at this point and pulls out a shotgun, whereupon the transgenics leap into action, blur at him, and take the gun, which goes off in the confusion.

Alec, still lounging comfortably on the bed in his motel room – and my, what a pretty topless shot that is – hears the shot and is instantly on the alert.

Thinking on his feet, one of the two X6 boys holds the purloined shotgun on the now terrified storekeeper and yells at the other to grab the cash from the register. Then they grab more food and run for it, botched hold-up almost-successfully completed.

At the window of his motel room, Alec watches them go and sighs. "Great. That's just great."

Military encampment. A Random Flunky reports to Shifty Bad Guy about a possible transgenic sighting, and is instructed to send a unit to check it out. As implied earlier, Operation Clean Up is clearly in full swing following the mass breakout at Manticore. Shifty Bad Guy takes a phone call at this point, handily providing us with his name in the process: say hello to White, younger and far more badass than Lydecker ever was. The name White is clearly a joke, since he habitually dresses all in black. The call is apparently to do with the little mini-mart heist we just witnessed, and he snaps at whoever is on the other end to handle it and keep local law-enforcement out of it. "The idea is to keep this mess under wraps…. Well tell them they can shove their jurisdiction, this is a federal matter."

Random Flunky offers a tally on the signalling operation: 38 transgenics have shown up at the rendezvous point during the day. And presumably all 38 are now dead, with the death toll set to rise even further for as long as this operation continues. White nods, and instructs him to keep the signal running every night "until they stop coming."

Another Random Flunky arrives with the freaky little band of X7 clones and their captive Lizard Man in tow. White looks at it, impassive. "What the hell is that?" Random Flunky #2 instantly starts to rattle off his best guess of what Lizard Man was designed for – operation in the desert, with skin designed to retain moisture, second eyelid to protect the cornea against sand and grit, and so on….

And this is where season two's Manticore arc starts to both lose and annoy me. Because up until this point the show has heavily implied that creatures like this are considered anomalies, experiments into human-animal DNA combinations that went wrong, were too animalistic to ever be seen or used, that the very human-looking x-series transgenics were Manticore's great success. But now all that groundwork is being completely retconned and we are expected to believe that, rather than being the results of botched experiments, hidden away in the basement and neglected, these bizarre human-animal hybrids were actually deliberately made, designed for specific operations, useful and wanted – and if that's the case, why the hell weren't they better looked after?

Best not to think about that one too hard. Bad for the brain. White is disgusted by Lizard Man's lizardlike appearance, snarking that he hates to think how many of them rolled off the assembly line. Random Flunky #2 adds that the X7s brought him in and that they were used to guard the perimeter at Manticore. This little chap totally acts like he's invested a lot of time in studying everything Manticore ever did – which begs the question of how, since all evidence should have been destroyed in the fire – and his life's work is to educate everyone else on the subject. White rains on his parade by boredly saying that he's read the reports himself and thus already knows all that, adding the detail given to viewers by Joshua in the last episode, that the X7s have some kind of hive mind thing going on. Random Flunky #2 is happy to be able to info-dump that they communicate ultrasonically, in digital code.

White is bored of this conversation already, and dismisses it completely with a disinterested order to ship Lizard Man out on the next transport to be taken apart by forensics. He doesn't mention what is to happen to the X7 clones, although you'd expect a similar fate for them, unless he plans to have them summarily executed in a quiet corner someplace. No matter that they have brought this bizarre creature to him –they are clearly psychologically incapable of operating outside of their basic guard dog function, whether Manticore exists or not; more like robots programmed to a specific task than people, certainly not individuals – they are still transgenics, and his job is to find and destroy all transgenics. Unless he plans to use the X7s to do the seeking part, and only execute them when they are no longer useful, which would be tremendously ruthless but entirely in keeping with what we know of him already, even on short acquaintance.

Either way, Lizard Man does not like the sound of his prospective shipment to forensics, and attempts an escape, grabbing White by the throat and lifting him off the ground, before being beaten into submission by the many soldiers in the room. Riled to anger now, White gets in a few vicious kicks, thus betraying his vengeful temper to viewers, and then orders all the transgenics in the room out of his sight.

Motel. Alec sits on the bed, fretting. Curiously, either he's been re-designing the layout of the room while he waits or the set was taken apart and put together again with joyous disregard for continuity since the last scene here, because the bed and door are in a completely different place now. Maybe there are two doors…my brain hurts. Anyway. He's fretting because he knows about his fellow transgenics and their little shoplifting excursion, and because his busty blonde playmate has not yet returned with food as she was supposed to, and that can't possibly be a good thing. He doesn't know for sure that his identity has been compromised, which must be why he hasn't moved yet, but he's worried.

Hearing a knock at the door, he mutters "about time", expecting it to be Busty Blonde back with the food, but peers through the peephole to be sure, because he's an X5 with around 20 years of Manticore military training and a fair helping of natural cynicism behind him. Alas, instead of Busty Blonde, he sees a couple of cops outside. By the time they tire of waiting for an answer and bust in, Alec has gone. Across the road, Busty Blonde hovers nervously outside the mini-mart, clearly having tipped the cops off to Alec's barcode connection with the robbers.

Making a hasty retreat through the woods nearby, Alec quickly stumbles upon evidence of his fellow transgenics – a discarded crisp packet – and tracks them with ease to a large barn nearby. Inside, the three shoplifting transgenics we met earlier have rejoined a couple of others, a shorthaired girl about the same age and a much smaller boy, under ten, and they are all digging into the food with alacrity. Alec is able to walk right up to them unnoticed, which doesn't say much about the standard of their training or suitability as soldiers – no wonder the X5s are so highly prized. "Daddy's home," he chirpily announces.

The ragged band of random transgenics instantly snaps to attention. "X6-787, sir," one of the boys announces himself. The X5s were designed to be leaders, generals – Lydecker told us that last season (although he also said that they'd gene-futzed this strength of character out of them after the escape in '09, but I don't see much evidence of that) – and the younger x-series' defer to them automatically. Except for those guard dog X7 clones.

"X6-089, sir," the shorthaired girl continues, and Alec quickly brushes them off before they can all introduce themselves to him. Alec's position in this episode is interesting, because he clearly doesn't want to saddle himself with the responsibility of leading and looking after all these ill-trained juniors, and yet he didn't walk away when he had the chance, choosing instead to check up on them. Alec consistently cares a lot more about his fellow transgenics than he would ever acknowledge. They are kin, whether he admits it or not.

"What are you bozos thinking, knocking over a quickie-mart?" he mildly berates them, and they are abashed. "I had a very sweet deal going," he adds, because Alec likes to make everything about Alec, lest anyone think he actually cares. "And you blew it. What's that doing here?"

He's noticed a stray X7 clone randomly standing in a corner, away from the rest, and Alec knows enough to be suspicious of all X7 clones. Blonde-X6 explains that the X7 escaped the attack with them. Alec questions her use of the word 'attack', and quickly learns that they believe Manticore was attacked by some outside agency, have seen the regroup signal and are just pausing for a food break here before continuing the six remaining klicks to the rendezvous site.

"Well, gang, I hate to break it to you but Manticore was not attacked. They tried to barbeque us," Alec tells them, quite frankly. Max aside, he's the only transgenic who knows anything approaching the truth about what happened that night. All any of the others know is that life was continuing as normal and then all of a sudden their world exploded into fire and confusion, and they've been lost and homeless ever since.

For a guy who so assiduously towed the company line in the last episode – which was only a couple of days ago in show time – Alec seems to have very rapidly come around to the idea of Manticore as the bad guys. Now, he's got close to full disclosure working on his side here – he knows that Manticore's leaders torched the place because their existence was exposed, and as one of those intended to have been murdered as a result, some bad feeling towards the arsonists is inevitable. But still, it's a pretty rapid turnaround for someone who should be as heavily brainwashed as the rest, so you have to wonder just how much of his company line-towing last episode was genuine brainwashed belief in the purity of Manticore's aims and ideals and how much was simply Alec making the best of his situation as it was at the time. Or maybe he's just that flexible, able to rapidly adjust his worldview in line with the information available to him, unlike most of the other transgenics we meet in this episode, who find the notion of being betrayed by their makers a lot harder to accept.

The little refugees don't know what to make of Alec's statement. He thought he'd expressed himself pretty clearly, but for their sake breaks his message down even further: "They're trying to kill us. The signal's bogus; it's a trap.

And this would be why he took the time to track them and check up on them, to try and make sure that they understand this point rather than blindly obeying that deceptive Signal of Doom, to allow them to make a properly informed decision. 'They tried to barbeque us', 'they're trying to kill us'. He has no desire to become their leader in any way, but does very much see himself as one of them and is trying, in his own way, to save their lives.

But they simply can't process what he is telling them. "That doesn't make any sense," X6-787 protests, the spokesman of the group. "We're valuable military assets, representing billions of dollars in R&D."
"Why would Manticore want to get rid of us?" adds the other X6 male.
"I want to get rid of you," says Alec, frustrated. "And I just met you."

X6-787 continues that they really should get moving now, and Alec can't quite believe their stubborn idiocy. "What part of 'they're trying to kill you' did you not understand?"
X6-787 politely but firmly insists that "officers of rank superior to yours left standing orders to regroup when instructed to do so."

"Well, far be it for me to violate the chain of command," Alec sarcastically snips, unwilling to argue the point any further. He's given them the information he felt they needed, they have chosen to disregard it, and Alec likes to take the path of least resistance, won't push the point if they are too stubborn to listen to reason. "You're really gonna do this?" he marvels as X6-787 orders his little team to fall in, and they prepare to march out.

"Didn't you hear me, soldier?" X6-787 snaps at the X7 Clone, who continues to lurk in his corner, ignoring them all.
"Oh, he heard you. He just can't believe his ears," says a disbelieving Alec, who knows that these youngsters are about to march off to their deaths but can't see any way of stopping them if they are really determined to go and don't believe his warning.
"I'm going to have to report you. Both of you," X6-787 huffs.
"You do that," says Alec, and quietly watches them go, shaking his head in disbelief. He's adjusted pretty fast to life outside of Manticore and away from official orders, but not to the point where he's prepared to take further steps to interfere any further in this matter.

Seattle. Logan's apartment. Max arrives. She and Logan greet one another awkwardly, while keeping a careful distance between them. When Logan tells Max to come see what he's found, she is reluctant to get too close because of the virus. He can't respond to that, it's all just too much, so instead switches straight to business without any further debate around the subject of how close they can or can't stand to one another, telling her about the large military operation going down in the woods around Manticore.

Max: "Same thing happened in '09, but by the time they got their act together we were gone."
Logan: "There's a difference. You escaped because you wanted out. They ran for their lives. They may not even realise Manticore wanted them dead."

Logan is grave, and Max looks stricken, as if this aspect of the situation had not occurred to her before now. The wider implications of both their actions are being rubbed in their faces for the first time. Logan shows Max a recording of the Signal of Doom. "I got it from an informant that lives out that way." Logan seems to have informants everywhere. It's one of those little minor background details of the show that always amuses me.

Max recognises it as a signal from Manticore, one that all the transgenics were trained to look for in case the facility was compromised. Reading it easily as an order to regroup, with coordinates attached, Max immediately heads for the door, and Logan promptly moves in front of her, bringing her to an abrupt halt to avoid inadvertently touching him. For all that Logan brought this to her attention, he's alarmed at the prospect of her actually doing something about it, so I'm not sure what he wanted or expected here. I'm not sure he knows, either, because this whole situation has really thrown them both. But I like about Max that for all her unwillingness to face up to her responsibility, when anything like this is actually presented to her face she never tries to duck out of it, always faces it head on. At least, she's prepared to accept responsibility for the transgenics. I think she'd still blow off the S1W without a second thought to protect herself and her kin.

Max: "Logan, they tried to kill them. Now they want to finish the job."

Logan argues that rather than being killed, the transgenics could simply be being loaded up and shipped off to a new facility somewhere. Max snips that that doesn't work for her either. She wants her fellow transgenics to retain their freedom, whether they wanted and were prepared for it or not. Freedom trumps all other considerations, and continued slavery is intolerable.

Logan: "Fine. You want to go out and save the day – what's the plan?"
Max: "Don't know yet."
Logan: "Max…"
Max: "This is happening because of me. I forced them to go. That's my family. Some of them are screwed up, some of them don't look like you, or me, or anything anybody's ever seen before. I'm responsible for them just the same."

It's the first time she has acknowledged out loud her responsibility for what is happening to her fellow transgenics. Up till now she's been concentrating on her own issues and avoiding any thought of the impact her actions may have had on anyone else. It was too big to face up to. But all it took was sight of that signal, and the realisation of what it meant, and here she is, acknowledging her own culpability in the matter and resolving to do whatever she can to fix things to her own satisfaction.

She goes to leave again, and Logan makes to grab her arm. Max jumps back before he can touch her and infect himself, snapping at him to be careful. "Now, see, you took the word right out of my mouth," Logan softly tells her.



Countryside. Max zooms along on her motorcycle. Manticore was an hour's journey from Seattle, we remember, and the rendezvous point is somewhere in the woods nearby, so she's got a lot of ground to cover. Meanwhile, the ragged little band of transgenic refugees encountered earlier march along in hopeful anticipation of being able to go home at last – no more foraging for food or squatting in barns. Then they reach the bridge, and see the execution squad all lined up, waiting for them – also sporting expressions of hopeful anticipation, but in their case what they are anticipating is another kill.

The executioners raise their weapons. Betrayed, the transgenics are alarmed. And Max zooms up in the nick of time, using her motorcycle as a bowling ball to topple the soldiers, giving the transgenics a chance to run for it. One of the kids, X6-787, gets shot in the leg in the melee, so Max hauls him onto her motorcycle and zooms off with him. Amazingly, although the soldiers send a hail of bullets after them, they manage to completely miss the open targets presented by their backs.

Barn. Rather than moving on just yet, despite the fact that this area is clearly not safe any more after that identity-compromising mini-mart raid and the kids have already gone, Alec has found himself a snack to appreciate from their purloined and abandoned stash. From his appraising attitude, I'm guessing it's the first time he's ever eaten this particular delicacy. "Hey, weird kid. Want some hydrogenated imitation pork product?" he offers. X7 Clone looks at him blankly, and then returns to staring out of the window.

Alec's head snaps up when he hears footsteps approaching, and then the beleaguered little refugee transgenics come racing back in, having presumably sprinted the full six klicks back from the rendezvous site. "Sir, you were right, it was an ambush." "They shot at us!"

"If you idiots let them follow you…" Alec growls, hearing an engine outside. But it's only Max. Alec rolls his eyes. "Oh great."

"Get me something to tie his leg off with," Max instructs the kids as she enters the barn.

Alec is already unbuckling his belt for just that purpose, because he's a fully trained X5 and thus thinks and reacts just as fast as Max, which appears to be considerably faster than these befuddled younger x-series types, who are floundering badly.

Max wasn't expecting to see her former breeding partner, and greets him with a scowl. "What the hell are you doing here?"
"I could ask you the same thing?" Alec points out, reasonably enough.
"I'd kick your ass, but we don't have time for that right now," Max snarls. Just what she thinks he's done to deserve an ass kicking isn't clear, since he is in no way responsible for the plight of these kids and did try to warn them. She's no doubt still pissed about the whole virus thing last episode, though.

Alec ignores her and focuses on their patient, producing a penknife and lighter to cauterise the wound. I won't comment on the accuracy or otherwise of all this field med. While her fellow refugees wonder why they were shot at, Blonde X6 turns queasy at the sight of blood. "I bet that one flunked field med," Alec snarks.

Notice that while Max snaps and bites, tense as they come over this the direct and inescapable consequence of her actions, Alec is the one reassuring the injured boy. There's a bit of squicky wound cauterisation by Max, while Alec and the other X6 male hold the squirming injured one down and the others cringe in sympathy. And then it's all over.

Max: "It's not over until we get the rest of these kids out of here."
Alec: "What do you mean 'we'? This is your party, not mine."

Max has a curious attitude toward Alec, throughout the season, and this scene is an excellent early example of it. She'll snap and snarl at him entirely unprovoked one minute, but automatically assume that she has his support, without even stopping to ask for it, the next. It's like she sees him as two separate people at one and the same time – the nuisance, who Manticore used to spy on her and doesn't seem to regret it, and the fellow X5, soldier and equal and therefore expected leader of a ragtag band of junior transgenics like this. It makes those rare occasions when she does actually ask him for his help, rather than just bitching at him until he goes along with her, stand out all the more as significant.

Alec, on the other hand, clearly sees this entire situation as Max's business and responsibility – she was the one who exposed Manticore and brought all this about, not him. He's been thrust unwillingly into a dangerous and unfriendly world as much as these kids have, and no doubt feels he's already done his bit by trying to warn them of a danger they couldn't have anticipated. He doesn't want responsibility for anyone other than himself, any more than Max does. The difference between the two of them is that Max was the one who let everyone out in the world and thus has little choice but to follow her conscience and do something about it, whereas Alec's conscience is clear in that regard. He did his bit, or tried to, anyway, when it was just him and the kids, but now that Max is here sees it very much as her problem.

Military encampment. White has heard the news about the girl on the motorcycle who managed to rescue a bunch of youthful transgenics from his crack execution squad, and is not best pleased about it. No surprises there. You've got to love the way the Random Executioner towers over him, though. White is not what you'd call tall, but he makes up for his lack of height with extra belligerence. Random Executioner tries to make excuses, and is saved by the arrival of Random Flunky #2 with Renfro's briefcase, which has been retrieved from the Manticore site. White pauses in his ranting to have a look, is pleased to find the discs containing the database and intrigued to find the file containing Max's DNA workup.

Random Executioner recognises Max's picture in the file as the same girl who just foiled his attempted execution. Amusingly, White asks if he's sure and Random Executioner is a tad indignant as he reiterates the positive identification. White gets right up in his personal space and orders him to find her.

Barn. Max finds a beat up old truck tucked away in a side room and has a quick glance under the hood, seems to like what she sees. Back in the main room, Alec is bored and has taken to amusing himself by throwing bits of popcorn at X7 Clone to see if he'll react. It's worth noting that for all his protestations of this being Max's problem to resolve not his, he hasn't left. The only reason for him to stick around at this stage is in case he's needed. X7 Clone looks at the popcorn and glances at Alec, impassive, then returns to staring out of the window. The other transgenics are mostly just hanging around being nervous, apart from the shorthaired girl, X6-089, who is fiddling with an old radio.

Max returns, and adopts her best sergeant's voice, ordering the young transgenics to fall in. This is a tone they are familiar with and know how to react to, so they promptly jump to and obey. The military tone might be a little harsh, but it's hardwired into these kids and thus the best way to handle them, the best way to get them to understand their situation and begin to deal with it.

Max: "There's been a change in your mission status, extreme and unforeseen. You've been betrayed by your own command. What do you do?"
Transgenic Chorus: "Re-deploy!"
Max: "Correct. How?"
X6 Male: "Unknown, Ma'am. We have no training with regard to that circumstance."
Max: "Do you know what that means?"
Transgenic Chorus: "No, Ma'am!"
Max: "All your training goes out the window.
Transgenic Chorus: "Yes, Ma'am!"
Max: "Starting with your blind obedience to Manticore and all it represents."
Transgenic Chorus: "Yes, Ma'am!"
Max: "Which means you're going to stop calling me 'ma'am' and start calling me Max."
Transgenic Chorus: "Yes, Ma'am!"
Max: "'Yes, Max', that's my name. And now that you're in the real world, you all should have names too."

The camera has panned back to Alec, still tossing bits of popcorn at X7 Clone while he listens, rolling his eyes and laughing at Max's earnest manner and her attempt to undo the training of a lifetime in one session. Possibly also the fact that she's telling them they aren't soldiers at the exact same time as addressing them as soldiers. The name thing he finds a little too much, having been through a similar process himself recently, and he voices a sarcastic protest, only to be snapped at by Max, who promptly returns her attention to the others.

Max: "You have to stop thinking of yourself as soldiers and start thinking of yourselves as people."



The X6 Male protests that they are soldiers. It's the only way they know how to think of themselves. Max immediately rounds on him. "You mouthing off to me? 'Cause I've zero tolerance for that, zero!" Heh. It's amusing, I suppose, to have her telling them they are no longer soldiers at the same time as continuing to treat them as soldiers. On the one hand she needs to talk to them as a superior officer to rank and file, because it's all they know how to understand, the only way to get the message through. But on the other hand, it does send awfully mixed signals.

And it makes me wonder again about Alec and the other X5s. These X6s make it clear that the transgenics are soldiers through and through, completely brainwashed, don't know any other way of thinking or being, have never learnt to think of themselves as individuals. And yet Alec is so very different, has thrown off the shackles of that brainwashing so much faster than any of these younger ones – already had a strong streak of individuality in the last episode that may or may not have been an assumed persona for a specific mission but which he is maintaining even now. Is that an X5 thing, that strength of character and independence that Lydecker claimed to have eliminated after the '09 escape? Is it because he was privy to inside information that none of the others knew of, thus making it easier to accept the concept of betrayal and move forward? Or is it just that Alec is, on a highly individual level, unusually flexible and adaptable in his worldview for a transgenic with 20 years of Manticore brainwashing behind him? It's interesting to speculate, and makes me wish that we could encounter other newly escaped X5s for a comparison.

"And to commemorate this special moment, that's going to be your name. Zero," Max tells the X6 Male.

Max sucks at picking names. She sends the newly named Zero off on sentry duty, and then turns her attention to the shorthaired girl, X6-089. Max dubs her 'Fixit', because she's good at fixing things, and sends her off to fix the truck. Zero and Fixit. Names like that are really going to help these kids blend in out there in the world.

Next up is the blonde X6, the one who turned queasy at the sight of blood. "Could always call her 'Ralph'," Alec heckles from the peanut corner. Max is a little taken aback when the girl decides that she likes it, and protests that it's a boy's name. Well, yeah, and so is Max, Max. The girl looks a little offended and insists that she still likes the name, so Ralph it is. And the newly named Ralph is sent off to check on 'Bullet', otherwise known as X6-787, the kid who got shot.

That just leaves the little one, who stands there all small and cute, clutching at a bugle, of all things. "I'm in the Bugle Corps," he explains, prompting Max to name him 'Bugler'.

Why on earth Manticore would have a Bugle Corps I'm not even going to begin to speculate. We know from flashbacks that Max and her unit at that age were in full soldier training – and not far off making their fateful and infamous escape – so it isn't just something harmless for the youngest transgenics to do until they are old enough for full training. It isn't logical at all, a TV thing rather than a Manticore thing. It's especially illogical to suggest that the kid would have found and clung onto his bugle while escaping a deadly fire. So we'll just glide by that detail and sigh once more at Max's naming ineptitude. Zero. Fixit. Ralph. Bullet. Bugler. And she expects these kids to try to blend in unnoticed among the humans out there in the world, with names like that.

Alec chimes in to sarcastically wonder if X7 Clone shouldn't have a name, too. X7 Clone suits him perfectly well, I feel. Max snips that she'll leave that to him, as the two of them are getting along so well, what with all the popcorn tossing and all. Nobody likes those X7 clones, because they have a hive mind and really aren't individuals in any way. They are a living representation of everything Max hated most about Manticore, so it's hardly surprising that she isn't including X7 Clone in her drive to humanise this little band of transgenics.

Military Encampment. Lydecker rocks up asking for White and bulldozes his way past security. Flustered, the random soldiers scurry around trying to find White, while Lydecker makes the most of the opportunity to ransack the tent White has been using as an office. Finding Renfro's briefcase, he pockets the discs with the database on and stuffs the folder containing Max's DNA workup under his arm without looking for it.

Outside, flanked by a bevy of flunkies, White heads for the tent and marvels at the notion that Lydecker should come to them and identify himself so openly. "What the hell was he thinking?"

Something of what Lydecker was thinking becomes apparent when they find that he has vanished into thin air once more, taking the contents of Renfro's briefcase with him. I find that I really enjoy Lydecker now he's gone rogue and is accountable to no one but himself and his own agenda. White seethes, which is something it is already apparent that he is extremely good at.

Seattle. Brooding in his apartment, Logan takes a phone call. It's Lydecker. Logan is extremely disconcerted and wonders how he got the phone number. Lydecker brushes the question off and says that he needs to get in touch with Max. Logan wonders why, but Lydecker won't tell him, instead asking if Logan knows where she is. Logan ponders the question for a moment, trying to decide what to do, and then admits that she is somewhere in the woods outside Manticore. I suppose that's vague enough not to compromise her if Lydecker's intentions prove less than honourable, and Lydecker has become something of an ally of late, even if a rather shady one.

"He'll be looking for her," Lydecker cryptically muses, and Logan wonders who 'he' is. Lydecker again doesn't answer his question, instead instructing Logan to tell Max to get out of there the moment he hears from her. He hangs up, and Logan is left somewhat confused. In his car, Lydecker ponders Max's DNA workup. It suddenly occurs to me that his discovery of this in White's office was probably the first time he knew that she was still alive, and we know from season one that Max was already special to him even before he saw this DNA workup that everyone's so excited about.

Military encampment. The satellite comes into range and the Signal of Doom is fired up for the night.

Barn. The Signal of Doom shines in the sky, but none of the transgenic refugees inside either see it or care, having bunked down for the night. Max, who doesn't sleep, prowls around watching over them. X7 Clone apparently also doesn't sleep, as he is still lurking over by the window, wide awake…and communicating ultrasonically with a couple of other clones, who have popped up outside, unbeknownst to any other inhabitants of the barn. X7 Clone smiles wickedly to himself.

Morning. Bullet is back on his feet, hobbling gamely, while worrywort Ralph flutters anxiously around him. Max smiles to see that already they are behaving more like people and less like soldiers, addressing one another by name rather than designation, and then jumps out of her skin when young Bugler starts up a rousing morning chorus on his bugle, hastily confiscating it before anyone hears and comes to investigate.

"X8-621, ready to commence training, ma'am," he announces, having apparently forgotten his change of circumstances overnight. Max reminds him that he has a name now, and cheerfully tells him that there's not going to be any more training. He's amazed.

Max: "You don't have to take orders any more. Not from anyone."

Well, not military orders, no. But he is still just a kid and therefore does need to be able to take instruction from his elders as he grows up.

Bugler: "Not even you?"
Max: "Especially not from me."

"Well, when the going gets cute, the tough get going." Alec has surfaced in time to observe this little exchange, pulling on his lovely leather jacket and preparing to make a move, since they are all going to be leaving today.
"You're really leaving?" Max is annoyed. "Figures you'd forget the one good thing Manticore ever taught us: never abandon your unit."

Impassive, Alec glances beyond her at Bullet, Bugler and Ralph, sitting together looking lost and uncertain. Alec points out that thanks to Max there is no more Manticore. "You made this mess. Not me."

Alec resents Max every bit as much as she resents him, which makes for an interesting dynamic. From her point of view he's a wastrel who was part of Manticore's plot against her and Logan, and who is now shirking responsibility by not helping her get these kids to safety or volunteering to take them under his wing on a more permanent basis. From his point of view she's the one who destroyed the only life he had ever known, which means picking up the pieces is her problem not his; he's already done his share of helping out of the goodness of his heart, and has enough problems of his own adjusting to life out in the world without taking on anyone else's issues.

Military Encampment. "You're sure this girl was with them?" Holding up a picture of Max, White questions the X7 clones, who are clearly being made use of rather than exterminated like their fellow transgenics. A Random Tech tells him his can see for himself, using her expensive-looking computer equipment to translate the clones' ultrasonic waves. 'Sonic recognition: X7-1334' is the header on the screen, which gives us a designation for at least one of the clones. It's also the first four-digit designation I remember seeing.

I've always wondered how the designations work. I mean Max, for example, is X5-452. I seriously doubt that means that there are 452+ X5s running around. Was she perhaps the 452^nd X5 embryo created, of which only a fraction resulted in a successful live birth? Or are the numbers generated completely randomly? Alec and his twin, Ben, were numbered consecutively – 494 and 493 respectively – which could support the embryo theory, but who knows? We are never told.

Anyway. The computer is able to reconstruct the sonic image relayed to the X7 clones by their fellow clone inside the barn, and the image that comes up does, indeed, resemble Max. Random Executioner thinks so, too, and White instructs him to take her alive if he can.

Given that the orders are to seek and destroy all transgenics, the order to take Max alive does kind of stand out, and sits alongside Renfro saving her life last episode and the intense interest generated by her DNA workup among everyone who reads it as a curiosity. This is another ongoing plot strand for the season.

Barn. Fixit has got the truck going now, so hopes are high of achieving a speedy getaway, when Bullet raises the alarm – there are soldiers outside. Max yells for him and the X7 clone to get away from the window…and realises far too late that the clone can't be trusted. There are, again, two more clones outside and he is communicating with them, betraying the other transgenics inside. "Someone's been talking out of school," Max snaps, dragging X7 Clone away from the window and instructing Ralph and Bullet to tie him up and blindfold him. The truck has now stalled again, delaying departure, and the soldiers fire smokers into the barn, which confuses the transgenics, who thought they were wanted dead.

Max gets the kids into the truck. "As soon as it starts, get the hell out. That's an order," she commands, still automatically treating them more as underlings than equals, despite her fancy words about their newly acquired freedom. Some habits are just too deeply ingrained to get past. Then she dashes off to run interference for them.

Gas-masked soldiers enter the smoke-filled barn. Max manages to take a couple of them out, and then has to outrun a hail of machine-gun fire, which doesn't exactly smack of an attempt to take her alive. White would not be impressed. She blurs around, generally avoiding and observing.

Fixit finally get the truck started and jumps in. Ralph starts to protest that they can't just leave Max, but Bullet, back in charge of their little unit, makes the hard decision to follow Max's order and go, leaving her behind. Zero at the wheel, the truck smashes through the wooden wall of the barn, barrels through a few random soldiers outside, and heads for freedom. Bullet seems to have acquired a gun and uses it to fire a few defensive shots out the window as they go, and the soldiers return fire. What they should do, really, is run to their own transport and give chase, but this doesn't seem to occur to them. Initiative clearly isn't encouraged in post-apocalyptic American military, whether human or transgenic.

Inside the barn, Max comes out of hiding and starts to fight, taking down a couple more soldiers before receiving a knockout blow. Random Executioner – 'Foxtrot One', he calls himself – reports her capture to White.

Military encampment. Later. Max wakes up inside a cramped metal cage and is startled to see Lizard Man in the adjoining cage. Being determined to treat all transgenics, whether human in appearance or not, as equals, she swiftly apologises for her reaction. Lizard Man blinks dolefully at her, and Max notes that he doesn't look so good and could do with some sun. "I bet they had you all hooked up back at Manticore," she mourns, whispering an apology.

'All hooked up back at Manticore'? Would he have been? Till now it has always been heavily implied that all creatures like this were locked away and neglected down in the basement, so you'd imagine that that's where this one came from and wonder how he survived for so long down there with the rest of the nomalies. Unless the nomalies divide into those that proved useful and those that didn't, the former receiving better care and quartering than the latter. Or Max is just projecting here. I really wish that those kinds of details were made clearer on the show.

Regardless, encountering Lizard Man like this, Max seems to actually regret her precipitous actions for the first time. Till now she's clung determinedly to the belief that her fellow transgenics would survive fine out there by themselves in the big wide world, that all they needed was a push in the right direction – and to not fall victim to any attempts at extermination – and all would be well. Freedom was all that mattered, whether they understood it or not. Seeing Lizard Man all locked up in a cage and suffering from the lack of sun, his appearance so blatantly non-human, never going to blend in and be accepted by society, that belief is now wavering and she is beginning to harbour doubt about her actions.

Max spots a cockroach crawling through her cage, and stamps on it in disgust. She looks up to see Lizard Man eyeing it hungrily and is a bit squicked out, but nevertheless picks the bug up by a wing and holds it out for him, through a letterbox-type gap in the cage wall which is presumably used to deliver food of the more average variety to prisoners. Lizard Man chitters excitedly, puts his mouth to the letterbox in his own cage, and uses a wickedly long tongue to whip the bug out of her fingers and into his mouth. "Nice move," says Max, trying not to let him see how weirded out she is by his human-shaped lizardness.

White arrives to make Max's acquaintance. She instantly assumes her very best insolent pose and expression. "You must be the new bad guy in my life."

White: "You know, 452, you're much prettier than your pictures."
Max: "Gee, miss the old bad guys already."



White gets right down to business, telling Max that he had a chance to peruse her DNA workup from her most recent stay at Manticore. This makes me wonder just how much information was in that file, because it seemed to be strictly medical information, the results of that one test, but White seems to know a lot about Max and her comings and goings from Manticore, just by reading it.

Max: "Let me guess – my insurance didn't cover it, you want me to go out of pocket."

White ignores this to ask if she's familiar with the term 'junk DNA' and Max obligingly spouts the biological definition of the phrase. "Layman's term for base pairs that don't contain viable genetic information. Doesn't do much more than fill space – kind of like that grey squishy thing between your ears."

"Would you be surprised if I told you that you don't have any junk DNA?" White asks, and Max is troubled to hear this, since it does indeed come as a surprise, tries not to let it show. "Seems every base pair is coded for some specific genetic purpose. Now the money question is: what does it mean? What is it that your genes are coded to do?"

Max: "Kick ass, mostly. After that, wouldn't know."
White: "Well, not to worry. 'Cause we're going to find out."

He walks out again, leaving Max alone to contemplate her fate and consider possible escape options.

Road. The Truck of Transgenics chugs along, entirely free of pursuit of any kind. Inside, Ralph is still concerned about them leaving Max behind. "After all she did for us."

Bullet sighs and points out that Max gave them a direct order, but then little Bugler pipes up. "She told me we don't have to take orders any more. Not from anyone. Not even her."

They all look at one another. "That's good enough for me," says Ralph. Zero and Fixit agree. Bullet smiles. "Let's do it."

Zero spins the wheel and turns the truck around, transgenics to the rescue.

Road. A spiffy little red convertible cruises along, Alec at the wheel. Wonder how he scored that little beauty. Where the younger transgenics are struggling, Alec is clearly finding it much easier to survive out there in the world. He's older, better trained – trained to be an assassin, working solo missions, we learned last episode, to work alone out in the field. So he's actually trained for this kind of scenario, blending in and making shift with what he can find. Scoring a sports car versus the beat up truck the others have got…well, that's just Alec, really.

"You're heading the wrong way," he sighs when he sees the Trucks of Transgenics going the other way. So…they were ahead of him on the road, then? And yet he left a long time before they did…. Finding and acquiring possession of the convertible must have taken a while, then. "Typical," he mutters, peering in his rear view mirror as the truck sails past him and away, heading toward danger.

Military encampment. Night has fallen, and the Signal of Doom is fired up once more. Meanwhile, the four X6's of Team Transgenic lurk furtively in the shadows nearby, having presumably left little Bugler to guard their truck.

"Well, let me guess. She got herself caught saving your butts." Heh. Alec has managed to sneak up on them again. Either that's a particular Alec skill, they are especially dense and bad at being x-series transgenics despite the years of training and billions of dollars of R&D that went into them, or the X5s simply remain the brightest and best transgenics of any series before or since. Lydecker always did say that the X5s were special.

And, for a second time this episode, Alec has chosen to come and do what he can to help when he could have just walked (or driven) away and left them to cope as best they could.

Bullet agrees that that's pretty much what happened, and Alec gives a little shake of the head to indicate his feelings about that, i.e. that Max is crazy, but says no more about it. "Well, let's get this over with."

Finally, Team Transgenic actually show signs of being transgenic as they swiftly and silently follow Alec and glide into action, disabling guards and the generator, so that the lights go out and confusion erupts. It figures that it would be during an operation like this that the kids finally shine, when they've been so lost, confused and incompetent all episode; this is what they have trained for all their lives, while being all alone in a hostile world is not something they know how to deal with. What they have really lacked is the psychological flexibility that has allowed Alec, for example, to adjust to his new circumstances so quickly and easily. And he does have his additional 'solo mission' training working in his favour.

Notice that Ralph kills the guard she attacks, snapping his neck, while both Bullet and Zero simply disable theirs, throttling them unconscious. Female transgenics are consistently portrayed as more pro-active, in general, than the males. They all acquire weaponry from the downed soldiers, and Alec uses hand signals to give the others their orders and they scurry off while he quickly locates Max.

"Alec!" For once she actually sounds pleased to see him. That's the first time he's been addressed by either name or designation all episode.
"To the rescue. Still wanna kick my ass?" he snarks, unlocking the cage to set her free. I guess he stole keys as well as a gun.
"Maybe later. Hurry up," says Max by way of thanks. "Him too," she adds, nodding at Lizard Man.
"Are you kidding me?" Alec groans, having not factored a nomaly into his impromptu rescue plan.
Max snarls at him to just do it, and then happily reassures Lizard Man that it's all going to be okay now. "Go, go."

Lizard Man does go, as fast as he can. Alec rolls his eyes. "You're welcome. Come on."
He makes to follow, since making a clean getaway is kind of a crucial part of any rescue, but Max isn't ready to leave yet. "Laser show's still going. You want to be the hero, you can't be half-assed about it."

Alec rolls his eyes again, but dutifully follows Max to the laser controls. "All those stars kind of make you feel small and insignificant, huh," she cheerfully remarks, successfully distracting the Random Soldier on duty long enough for Alec to knock him out. This is where Alec makes a good foil for Max, because Logan – being more of a tactical support guy – could never really team up with her on missions like this. Sometimes life is a lot easier working as a pair, even if – often especially if – there's an element of conflict, so it's an addition to the cast that really works.

Between them, Max and Alec swiftly re-programme the Signal of Doom into a Signal of Warning, and I like how they just do it, no communication or discussion needed, they just work together fluidly and naturally, sharing a simple mutual goal. X5s in action.

Somewhere out in the woods, a grubby band of young transgenic boys – looks to me like two X6s and two X8s – see the new Signal of Warning.

Military encampment. Downed guards are discovered and the alarm is raised. White wonders why Random Flunky #2 is staring up at the sky. "That's not the signal to regroup," RF#2 tells him, and I'm impressed by his ability to read the signal just by looking at it. "It's a signal to scatter and go to ground." White immediately gets on his radio and orders all units to disable the signal. He wants the transgenics to come, not run away – the more they scatter, the harder his job becomes.

Out in the woods, the all boy transgenic team disconsolately turn around and wander off the way they came, disappointed to learn that they aren't going home after all. They really do look grubby, and are clearly finding life on the lam difficult. Makes you wonder how well groups like this will survive, over time. Also, they are still not much wiser than before – they know now not to try to get back to Manticore, but they still don't know why. Still don't know that it was their own command that betrayed them, rather than an attack by an outside agency.

Military encampment. Deciding that the new signal has been broadcasting long enough, Max tells Alec to trash it. He obligingly opens fire on the controls with his purloined sub-machine gun. A Random Soldier creeps up behind them, but Lizard Man comes to the rescue and disables him. He's on the opposite side of a small clearing, and Max gestures to him to join the two of them. Alas, White sees him as he leaves cover and crosses that small clearing, and shoots him.

Max is dismayed and her immediate impulse is to run to the fallen nomaly, but Alec keeps his head, grabs her arm and pulls her away. They make a speedy exit, just in the nick of time.

Frustrated and angry, what with Max escaping and the signal being destroyed, White relieves a little of his tension by shooting the grievously injured Lizard Man again, hastening his death. RIP, Lizard Man.

Road. Day. Team Transgenic line up in front of their truck, while Alec lounges on the hood of his spiffy red convertible nearby. Logan has joined the party, we see, providing hastily knocked-up IDs and passports for the youngsters to get across the border to Canada, and is now lurking by his car, keeping a respectful distance rather than crashing the party.

Logan seems to send an awful lot of people over the border into Canada when the States get too hot for them. I wonder if Canada minds. Also, Max has been out here two full nights and into a third day now. Normal must be pitching an absolute fit.

Zero wonders if they'll ever see Max again, and she ponders the question for a moment and then nods. "Promise. Now, I'm going to drop a little wisdom on you grunts, so pay attention. First time I got out in the world, I lost track of all the kids I escaped with. Spent the next ten years trying to find them. Don't let that happen to you. Stay together. Family."

The kids all smile at one another. They weren't a unit back at Manticore, were thrown together by chance during the escape, but they are definitely a unit now. Begin more of a go-it-alone type by inclination – he's a lot more like Max than either of them would ever admit, which is probably half the reason they rub each other up so badly – Alec decides that's more than enough of the touchy-feelies for him. "Okay, I'm outta here before the waterworks start."

But Max calls him back before he can get into the car. "We have one last thing to do. As soldiers…. Pay our respects to those that didn't make it."

Alec and the X6s snap to attention, with Max facing them in sergeantly fashion, while little Bugler bugles the Last Post. This scene alone is the whole reason the storyliners put that kid in the Bugle Corps. Flashbacks of transgenics lost remind us of some of those they are paying their respects to. The little band of refugees gunned down at the start of this episode. Ben. Eva. Zack. Tinga. Those that perished in the fire, which some of them surely must.



Their last duty as soldiers carried out, farewells are said. Max hugs Ralph and Fixit, shakes hands with Zero and Bullet, and affectionately rubs little Bugler's buzz-cut head. And I find, on reflection, that I like this intrepid little band of transgenics. They've come a long way in the course of the episode, are a nice little mix of personalities, and have a real chance of making it. It's a shame Max and Logan felt they had to send them all the way to Canada in order to give them a good start; it would have been interesting to have characters like this as recurring in the show, to chart their progress, rather than focusing on the escaped nomalies as the season to come tends to do.

Max meets Alec's eye, and that's what passes as a farewell for the two of them. And then they all head their separate ways, Team Transgenic in their truck and Alec in his spiffy red convertible, while Max thanks Logan for coming through with the paperwork. And then there's awkwardness, because Max and Logan have not even begun to come to terms with the virus that now divides them, are not sure how to have a relationship of any kind where they can't touch.

"You did a good thing, Max," Logan assures her, knowing her well enough to know how all this will be hitting her. "Not just for them but for all of them. They'll figure it out."

And the transgenics in general stand a much better chance of figuring things out now that they aren't being lured to their deaths, he doesn't add. Max manages a ghost of a smile. She needed that validation. It's been a hell of a week for her – for all of them.

Max has her motorcycle and Logan has his car, and they head back into town separately, still so much to work through.

Max [voiceover]: "I look at Logan and I wanna take my own advice and stay together. But how are we supposed to do that when his life depends on us staying apart? Who knows, maybe we can beat this thing. I guess we'll just have to see where this road takes us."

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