More background for this episode, but this time it’s for Laura.
When Laura gets into her car with the intention of going out into the Red Zone to treat the little girl that inspired the near riot when Laura tried to have her brought in for treatment, we see a flashback of why she’s so afraid of the Red Zone.
Back in her teenage days, her and a bunch of friends go to party at a Red Zone club. Krauss catches on, of course, and sends bodyguards to watch her. Of course that’s no fun, so she makes off with a cute guy she was flirting with at the club, ditching the bodyguards. Big mistake.
Cute guy turns out to be a kidnapper, turning gullible Green Zone kids into easy ransom money. He calls her emergency contact on her bracelet, but Laura gives him her friend’s name, afraid that if he knew she was Krauss’ kid there’d be a big problem. We also see that the kidnapping is a family affair, with the kidnapper’s wife helping him, as their nephew and (mother?) do the kid’s homework at the kitchen table.
We find out that SPIGA has a really messed up kidnapping policy, and after the kidnappers are paid, generally the payment is used as a way to find the kidnappers and neutralize everyone, including the kidnapee, in case intellectual property is compromised. Ouch. So, Krauss sees an advantage in Julian, who at this time is a somewhat junior security man who wants a transfer. She promises him a transfer if he saves her daughter, getting there before the SPIGA goons do.
The kidnappers find out who Laura is, of course, and demand more money. Not before they escalate violence a bit, since at first, Krauss said she wasn’t going to pay. They quite messily cut Laura’s ear off.
One of the kidnappers carelessly leaves the scalpel they did it with on the table next to her, and Laura manages to get hold of it. She cuts her way out of her restraints (while mangling her wrist doing it), and when the wife of the kidnapper comes back into the room, she stabs the woman in the neck.
Julian has also managed to find her by this time, and he storms in, killing the rest, just in time to save her from the SPIGA goons. When they get back to Krauss, we find out that Laura’s dad must have also been kidnapped, as she yells at her mother, demanding to know what happened to her father. She’d heard all of what the kidnappers discussed after they found out who she was, they hotly debated what was going to happen based on what one man told them about SPIGA kidnapping policy. She knows that they probably didn’t even try to save her father, when given what Krauss did to save her, they likely could have.
Later, we hear Krauss discuss with Julian how they need to keep the truth from Laura so she doesn’t hate her father. Was he a defector?
A kindly doctor patches her up, and the doc is obviously Laura’s inspiration for becoming a doctor herself.
Of course, Krauss backstabs Julian and says she can’t get him his transfer, because who else can she trust? She guarantees him the top security job once the other guy retires. Julian doesn’t want it, but obviously he took it.
Laura back in the present makes the decision to go help the Red Zone girl. She’s facing her fears.
Meanwhile, Ben plots with Theo to dispose of Caplan’s body. They’re sending the car out, like we knew before, but they want to rig his watch to make it look like he defected (since his body is never going to be found). Ben rigs the watch to go dark long enough for Theo to goad an Inazagi suit into taking the watch back to her corporation. Once it goes live again, it’ll look like Caplan defected.
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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.