We pick back up at Ben’s think fast move to beat Everclear–erasing Aaron from his brain.
Like some kind of bad episode of electroshock therapy, Ben cooks his brain with the pirated Everclear head gear. He made a backup of his memories, however, and gave them to Hendrick to restore him after he beats Everclear. He lets Hendrick know that he’s only got a few days to accomplish this though, or Aaron is gone forever.
Too much temptation to leave in Hendrick’s hands, since Hendrick sees him as a liability, but Ben isn’t stupid. More on that later.
Ben wakes up in his car, sitting in his driveway with no memory of what happened. His wife knows right away something is up, but takes his turn around in attitude as a good thing. He tells her he’s committed to starting a family with her. Oops.
Ben gets dragged in for the Everclear interrogation by Julian almost immediately, and this mind-wiped Ben has no idea why. Of course, he passes the interrogation. Julian’s instincts are screaming at him that Ben is the one who murdered Roger, and that even though the interrogation is telling him otherwise, he knows something’s off.
Laura begins running her Red Zone clinic, and one of her first patients is a kid with a black market artificial heart. It needs resetting, but when she calls the company who made it for a reset, they tell her it’s stolen and they’re going to shut it down. Of course, new and improved Laura with the bravery and the backbone isn’t taking no for an answer, so she uses the tech at hand and resets the heart manually with a cardiac needle to the kid’s chest.
The biotech company shows up looking to shut it down and reclaim their stolen goods, but Goran has her back, threatening the company that he won’t protect their people when they come to harvest plasma from his residents. It works.
Julian talks to his wife about his doubts at the job, and she convinces him to confide in someone. This is where we find out that Julian and Goran are old army buddies. Interesting.
We also find out that one of the SPIGA board members has it out for Krauss when he asks Julian to keep him apprised of the murder investigation over Krauss’ head. Julian is loyal enough that he politely declines and informs Krauss, but it leaves us wondering why Julian is so loyal despite what we know about their relationship so far. Krauss screwed him over when he wanted out, keeping him at her side. Why does he owe her any loyalty?
Theo, meanwhile, proves that yes, he is in WAY over his head. Dude, it is awesome to see you’re an equal opportunity lover, but the drug addict thing really looks bad on you. Sure, you’re winning the important fights, but you’re losing everything else.
Ben is still mind wiped Ben when he tries to clear himself of suspicion by helping Julian investigate a murder that he definitely committed. He looks at Roger’s hacked GPS, finds the real murder scene, and comes up with a way to reconstruct some sort of footage of the crime. He gets a real surprise when he discovers it was him that murdered Roger.
Hendrick drags his feet in restoring Ben to Ben/Aaron. However, he gets an automated message Ben set up before the wipe in the event that Hendrick was tempted not to restore him. He says he’s got a limited timeclock to restore him, or his real identity is out.
Hendrick instead tries to hack Ben’s record of Hendrick’s real identity, triggering a second message that halves his time. He better restore Aaron to Ben soon.
Ben may be able to still prevent Julian from finding out the truth, but another aspect of Ben’s plans are already in jeopardy; Ben doesn’t remember that he was taking birth control to prevent him getting Laura pregnant, and has sex with her.
Oops.
Hendrick better hurry his ass up.
Previous Episode: Executables
JL Jamieson is a strange book nerd who writes technical documents by day, and book news, reviews, and other assorted opinions for you by night. She is working on her own fiction, and spends time making jewelry to sell at local conventions, as well as stalking the social media accounts of all your favorite writers.