S02E09 - EXTRACTION
The episode begins with an aerial shot of three black SUVs driving through the ruins of Midtown Manhattan. Soon, a crow comes into view, soaring overhead and close to the camera. We follow the SUVs and zoom down onto the street ahead of them.
Ducked into alleys on opposite sides of the empty street, Eve, Helena, Magnes, Norman, Wireless, and Elisabeth wait for the vehicles to arrive. Wireless makes hand signals indicating distance and Magnes holds a bundle of rubber and metal in his arms. When the trucks are nearly on their position, Magnes flies across the street and lays down a spike strip.
When the lead truck hits the spike strip it swerves out of control but doesn't crash. Helena conjures a powerful downdraft that tips the truck over onto its side. The second truck smashes into the first but the third is able to go up and over the curb to avoid the spikes
Inside the third truck a federal agent shouts for the driver to keep going. He asks about the other trucks and the agent tells him to "just drive!" As Wireless, Helena, and Elisabeth close in on the first two vehicles, Magnes grabs one end of the spike strip and says he'll hit the other one and flies off as fast as he can. Elisabeth blows open the back door of the second truck with a scream, then Helena fills the truck with a powerful blast of wind, knocking Company agents against the back wall. She shouts, "Clear! They're not in this one!"
Wireless goes to the truck on its side, training her pistol on the driver and considering shooting, but doesn't. Norman and Eve open the door of the lead truck and sees the back is empty. Norman shouts out, "They're in the third truck! Go! Go!" Wireless rushes back to her position and hops on a motorcycle, revving it up as Helena joins her on the back and the motorcycle peels off.
Up ahead, Magnes tries to do the same trick and lay down a spike strip, and though the truck hits it and swerves, without Helena around it continues to drive on run-flat tires. Magnes calls into a cell phone that the truck reached the edge of Midtown and is moving into traffic, he flies in pursuit only to see Helena and Wireless zip under him on their motorcycle.
The Ferrymen proceed into a high speed chase thorugh downtown New York, following the armored truck. Wirless is changing traffic lights as they move and driving at speeds of over 100 miles per hour, zipping between cars. Police notice the chase and enter pursuit, Helena looks back to them and calls up a stormfront to stay behind their position, causing a downpour to slow the police pursuit. When they don't relent it changes into a blizzard and the police cars slide off the road.
Magnes lands with a thump on the roof of the truck. The driver notices and swerves intentionally and Magnes clings on for dear life. In the back of the truck Doctor Price and Doctor Woods shout in fear. Odessa grabs Woods by the collar and says that it must be PARIAH and that this is their chance. Woods asks her what she means and Odessa says a bid for freedom. Odessa says the Company would never let them retire, but Woods refuses to run into the arms of terrorists. As the truck swerves and they hear sirens blaring, Odessa says that Woods always lacked imagination. Woods asks her if the Company is so bad and she says he wasn't born a prisoner into it.
Outside Magnes climbs down the side of the truck and kicks in the driver's side window, then tries to fight the driver. Magnes gets punched in the face and knocked off the side of the truck and just barely flies out of the way in time to avoid being hit by an oncoming car. Helena and Wireless roar past him on her motorcycle and Wireless tries shooting out the tires.
Inside the truck as gunfire ricochets around the undercarriage, Odessa begs Woods to reconsider. Woods says he'd sooner die than betray the Company, their work is too dangerous. Odessa says she was afraid he'd say something like that, produces a scalpel from her jacket and slashes Woods' throat. Woods grasps at his neck, gurgling blood and struggling. He collapses onto the floor of the truck and Odessa emotionlessly turns to look out the back window, seeing Wireless and Helena in hot pursuit.
Odessa turns back and looks through the small window to where the driver is but sees something in the middle of the road up ahead. The camera zooms through the truck in slow motion to reveal Sylar standing in the middle of the road, pointing a finger at the truck. He smiles and upturns two fingers and the armored truck first smashes down into the street then flips end over end going right past Sylar before crashing back down and sliding across the street behind him.
Seeing Helena and Hana approaching, Sylar points a fingergun at them and fires a laser blast. But he isn't aiming at them, but rather cars closer to them. Sylar's laser blast causes a yellow cab ahead of the motorcycle to explode, sending police and civilians scattering. Wireless tries to stop but breaks into a skid. She and Helena fall off the motorcycle and roll across the street as the bike skids into the firey wreckage.
Sylar turns to the truck, ripping the back door off with telekinesis. He's confused to see blood and Doctor Woods squirming inside the overturned vehicle. When Odessa sees Sylar all of the color drains out of her expression. He sees the bloody scalpel in her hand and smiles, then smashes her against the side of the truck, rendering her unconscious. He then fires a finger-laser into Woods' head, killing him before wrenching an armored case marked with a biohazard sign out from an overhead compartment.
As Sylar goes to pick up Odessa, several police officers fire at him but miss. Sylar turns and picks up one with telekinesis and smashes him into another with a snap and pop of breaking bones. Magnes swoops in out of nowhere and kicks Sylar in the face, but is grabbed by the ankle and //smashed// into the open door of the flipped truck.
Before Sylar can get Odessa again he is hit by a blast of powerful wind and thrown forward. When he turns around he sees Wireless running out of the fire in her motorcycle gear. She fires a handgun while she runs as Sylar, who deflects the bullets with telekinesis. When he fires a laser blast at her, Wireless drops into a slide under the blast to close the last bit of distance then rises up and punches Sylar in the chest. He grabs her by the neck and lifts her up with telekinesis, but Wireless wraps her legs around his head and flips him down to the ground.
While Sylar is pinned, Wireless grabs him by the collar and struggles for a moment, then lifts her gun to try and shoot him in the head. She is thrown off of him with telekinesis. Sylar rolls over, grabs Odessa's ankle and the biohazard case with his other hand abd rockets up into the sky like a bullet. Magnes crawls out of the back of the truck just in time to see Sylar fly away. He tries to pursue, but stumbles and collapses onto his knees.
Wireless says they need to get out of here before more law enforcement arrives. Helena stumbles to the back of the truck, sees Doctor Woods dead. She curses, and tells Magnes they need to get out. Magnes says he'll try and hooks his arms around their waists and struggles to get airborne, then flies as fast as he can up toward a nearby roof as sirens blare in the distance.
The last shot is of a crow perched on a streetlight, watching everything, before we cut to the introduction and then smash to black.
Late Fall, 2008.
The Ferrymen regroup battered and at a loss at the Warehouse. The first thing Norman asks when Wireless arrives with Magnes and Helena was if the failsafe is in place. Wireless says it should be and opens a laptop, showing a dot moving on a map. Elisabeth asks what that is and Wireless explains that she had the foresight to plant a cell phone on Sylar when he appeared. She's tracking its movement through the city.
Helena doesn't know how they're going to stop this if Sylar is working with that group and Eve says that it doesn't matter, stopping him is their responsibility. They let him out, they have to end him. Magnes says that's easyer said than done, nursing his black eye and head wound with a bag of frozen peas.
Gillian says she might have an idea drawing everyone's attention. She explains that she hasn't been honest about her ability, but if Sylar is involved than Jenny might be too. She says that her ability doesn't do anything for her, but that she can feel the presence of other people with powers and either make their abilities more powerful or less powerful, but sometimes it runs out of control. She says this is what happened to Frank and why he couldn't control his fire.
Helena realizes this means they could weaken Sylar enough to kill him. She asks if Gillian is willing to help and she agrees to. Meanwhile, Wireless sees something on her laptop and says that the signal was lost at the Consolidated Edison power plant, but two hundred feet below it. Norman asks what that means and Wireless says that's the depth at which subway trains run. Light flashes behind Wireless' eyes and she says there was an subway station under construction there in the late 1990s that was never finished. Teo comments on how that feels like a perfect James Bond villain's lair.
Elisabeth wonders if they should contact the federal government about this, but Wireless thinks they would just get in the way like the police today. She also doesn't trust them to follow up on the leads before it's too late. Helena agrees and says they have to do this on their own. Teo says he should be able to get some body armor and firearms from Richard's security company to help with this. Helena says Teo isn't going anywhere, but he insists he can help, he was only stabbed a little.
At the secret headquarters below Consolidated Edison, Kazimir walks through the concrete hallways while Eileen demands to know where Amato is. Kazimir says that if Amato's intuition of events past and future were any indication, he should be precisely where he needs to be. Eileen asks Kazimir what that means and Kazimir tells her not to worry.
From the darkness of the subway tunnel, Sylar arrives with Odessa and the virus and Kazimir is overjoyed. Sylar asks just what it is he's stolen and Kazimir says a key to the future. Eileen takes the case with the virus from Sylar and Kazimir tells him to bring Odessa to the lab.
At Crimson Security Solutions, Richard Cardinal stands by a window in his office smoking a cigarette. He says that he has reservations about arming the Ferrymen, and Teo says it is the only way to make sure this gets done, unless Richard wants to lend some of his security force. Richard tells Teo not to push his luck and says they'll have their weapons, but they're not going to be traced back to Richard. Teo asks what that means and Richard just smiles.
Cut to Kain Zarek opening the trunk of his car in a dirt parking lot in Brooklyn near the river. Teo leans over and looks into the trunk and asks, "Are these guns hot?" Kain smiles back and says, "Hot like your momma." Teo nods, trying to hide his concern and agrees, "Mama Laudani was a looker." Kain slams the trunk shut.
At the Warehouse, Norman goes over the plan for infiltrating the subway below Consolidated Edison. He goes over the tunnels, entrances and exits, possible places they could be keeping the virus and Doctor Price. Helena asks what the plan is if the virus gets out, to which Wireless says, "There is no plan, because there's no cure."
Gillian, rather defiantly, says they'll have to make sure it doesn't come to that. Helena agrees and Norman says there's a chance not everyone will walk away from this. Eve says that if they fail the whole world won't rise up to walk another day, and that's reason enough to take the risk. Magnes agrees, and says that maybe this is why they were born with the gifts they have, to be heroes and do what other people had no chance to.
Back at the Vanguard's headquarters, Odessa sits in a lab with the sealed samples of the virus. Kazimir is with her. She asks what he wants her to do, and Kazimir explains that he needs the virus safely deployed in a shipping container and that Odessa is the only one who knows how to safely handle it. Odessa laughs and says that isn't true, which promts a look of confusion from Kazimir. Odessa smiles, realizing she knows something Kazimir doesn't. She says she'll take care of it, so long as he tells her why he's doing this.
Kazimir says that it's simple. The world is too large to change, that in order to enact great change the world must shift. Kazimir criticizes wars and famine as being overcome or not enough. Kazimir likens this to a great flood to wipe the world clean. First of his own cursed kind, then of the rest of humanity save for the small percentage that would have a natural immunity. Odessa is fascinated by Kazimir but ultimately repulsed by him. She hides her disgust and says she'll have everything he needs soon. In the hall outside, Sylar has eavesdropped on the conversation and storms off before Kazimir leaves the lab.
At sunset, the Ferrymen travel in Teo's pickup truck to Brooklyn with a bed of firearms stashed under a tarp in the back of the truck. They drive off the road and onto old rail tracks and to the entrance of an underground tunnel. Teo, Elisabeth, Gillian, Eve, Helena, and Magnes all pile out of the truck while Wireless pulls up beside them on a new motorcycle. Gillian asks where Norman is and Wireless says he's a strategist, not a fighter. The Ferrymen arm themselves from the truck and descend into the darkness of the subway tunnel.
In the underground lair, Sylar finds Eileen and corners her in Kazimir's study. She tells Sylar he can't be in here, but he picks her up with telekinesis and pushes her against the wall. Sylar says they're all being played, and he demands to know if she's aware that Kazimir intends to kill them all. Eileen looks confused and says that isn't the case, that the Vanguard will rule the world after its civilizations have crumbled.
Eileen seems horrified, looking at Sylar with disbelief. He says that Kazimir is going to kill them both and Eileen is shaken and confused. Sylar says something has to be done and Eileen asks what they could possibly do since he can't be killed. Sylar has another idea, that if the virus is so powerful maybe it can kill even Kazimir Volken. Eileen agrees to go along with this plan and encourages Sylar to confront Kazimir.
In the subway system, the Ferrymen continue their search for the Vanguard, finding evidence of their presence. Wireless finds tire tracks in the dirt of the unfinished rail line and points down a darkened tunnel. Magnes says this place gives him the creeps and no one disagrees.
Sylar finds Kazimir in a loading dock where there is a semi truck that looks like it either recently unloaded something or is waiting for cargo. Kazimir turns and says it's so nice to see Sylar here, that everything is in place. Sylar says that there's been a change of plans and snares Kazimir with his telekinesis. Distracted, he notices Eileen's heart rate spike too late before she sticks him in the neck with a syringe. Sylar staggers, gasping for breath and stumbles into the empty trailer.
Kazimir nudges Sylar in the chest with his cane and smiles as he falls over. "Sedatives," Kazimir explains. But then Odessa shows up with the canister for the virus' deployment. Eileen blows Sylar a kiss and Kazimir tells Odessa to bring the canister inside. She does so, approaching Sylar like a sedated tiger, and opens the containment device to reveal a glass cylinder of clear liquid. Kazimir remarks how something so small can be so deadly. Eileen draws a gun and shoots the cylinder out of Odessa's hand, causing broken glass to embed itself into her face and hand. The virus is now exposed inside the trailer and Kazimir pulls the door to the trailer closed behind them and locks it.
Turning to Eileen, Kazimir says "Finish preparations. It's time."
