Aboard the Taelon mothership, Zo'or needles Sandoval about his lack of progress in finding the Volunteers, which were apparently acting outside Taelon orders. Zo'or tells Sandoval to speed up his investigation to mitigate any further negative publicity.
Wheels within wheels, slugs within arms
As it turns out, the "Volunteers" are actually a radical Resistance cell disguised as rude Taelon sympathizers in an attempt to fan anti-alien feelings. The leader, now identified as Sylvia, ignores the pain caused by her use of he skrill and announces her plan to arm her fellow revolutionaries with skrills of their own.
However, an alarm goes off, interrupting her grand plan to give her followers symbiotic weaponry. They retreat to a laboratory to investigate.
Elsewhere, Da'an and Liam meet Sandoval at the Skrill Development Center in New Capetown, South Africa. According to Da'an, the Center is where "skrills are birthed, and then genetically reengineered into weapons."
Sandoval has learned that the Volunteers in the Earth Abides incident were imposters and notes that a security breach at the Center resulted in the theft of a prototype skrill that bonds without a CVI.
However, Dr. Linford, director of the Center, claims the prototype takes an unspecified toll on the host's nervous system. She then shows Liam the skrill queen, the only source for new skrills on Earth.
Liam asks why the thieves didn't steal the queen while they were at it, but Dr. Linford tells him it would be impossible to keep the queen alive outside the lab. For all this, Liam notes that the color patterns on the queen's body look strange. To everyone's horror, he reaches into her holding tank and passes his hand through the queen. It is a hologram. The queen has been stolen.
Since the theft must have been an inside job. Sandoval demands a staff list from Dr. Linford. Before she can comply, Sandoval receives a call from Zo'or, who summons him to the mothership. As he departs, he is watched by a blatantly ominous technician who we earlier saw observing Liam and Da'an's arrival. We will later learn that this technician is "Noah."
Say hello to Black Wednesday
Liam meets Renee at Flat Planet, where he shows her composite holograms of the rogue Volunteers. Liam believes their actions are an attempt to discredit the Taelons and the Volunteers, but suspects Renee knows more than she's telling.
On the mothership, Zo'or demands results from Sandoval. Sandoval tries to mollify his alien boss by saying he has arrested Dr. Linford, pointing out that it would take a scientist to keep the queen alive and birth her litter. Zo'or reminds a now uncomfortable Sandoval that this assumes the queen is still alive.
Sylvia reports that the hologram was discovered and that the investigators suspect an inside job.
Liam and Renee hold another impromptu meeting at the outdoor café. Renee reports that the fake Volunteers look and sound like members of a group called Black Wednesday. Liam claims that Black Wednesday are a Taelon myth, but Renee knows better.
The Taelons landed on a Wednesday. Renee was at the meeting the next day where the Resistance was born. Black Wednesday are fanatically anti-Taelon, and Sylvia Eringraf in particular is "a sociopath with an unyielding belief in her mission." Renee wants to find Sylvia before the Taelons do in order to secure the skrill queen for the Resistance.
In Copenhagen, as a man makes his way to his car, only to be set upon by Black Wednesday, back in their Volunteer gear. Sylvia accuses this man -- "Dinesen" -- of sedition against the Taelons, but he resists, pulls a gun, and shoots one of the "Volunteers" before being taken down himself by Sylvia's skrill.
Sandoval and Liam meet at the site of Dinesen's murder, where Sandoval tells Liam he still believes Dr. Linford was responsible for the theft of the skrill queen. Liam is not as certain of this. He agrees to check the Portal Authority for records of anyone traveling with a skrill and a wounded Volunteer while Sandoval tracks the wounded Volunteer's DNA through the FBI.
Love, revolutionary style
The hideout we now know belongs to Black Wednesday, where the "Volunteer" shot by Dineson has died. Noah, the technician seen at the Skrill Development Center, disposes of the body, then checks on the skrill queen.
He tells Sylvia she must carry on if anything happens to him. After a heated exchange about their respective roles in the organization, the pair share a decidedly non-revolutionary embrace. Their moment of passion over, they discuss their plan to use Sylvia's skrill as a model when genetically engineering the queen's next litter. Noah makes Sylvia promise she won't use her skrill again until he can bypass whatever is causing her pain. She tells him to hurry so she can get back to causing more mayhem. Their conversation turns to Dr. Linford, and Noah announces that he has planted something -- presumably of incriminating nature -- in her files.
Aboard the mothership, Sandoval comes to Dr. Linford's cell to discuss what he found in her files. Alan Kelley, the rogue Volunteer shot in Copenhagen, was apparently a participant in a compatibility study Linford performed to find a host for the skrill prototype. However, the doctor denies knowing Kelley. Sandoval demands that she provide him with a list of the equipment needed to keep the queen alive and bring her litter to term.
Elsewhere on the sprawling orbital vessel, Da'an wonders whether the Taelons' subjugation of the skrills has run its course, but Zo'or reminds him that the skrills serve a purpose in their struggle with the Jaridians. Da'an notes significantly that the Taelons won't be able to bio-engineer humans they way they did the skrills.
Renee walks into Flat Planet while talking to Liam on her global. They agree that Black Wednesday needs to be brought in, and Renee terminates the call. She turns to Augur, who's lamenting the sale of half interest in the Flat Planet to a partner he hopes will be "silent," not interfering with his eccentric business practices.
Renee offers to return one of his paintings, Van Gogh's "Starry Night," that she bought at auction in exchange for his help in determining whether the members of Black Wednesday might be using his counterfeit cash cards.
Liam informs Da'an that he tracked the rogues as far as Union Station before the trail went cold, at which point he turned his investigation to research into the skrills. Da'an gives Liam access to more comprehensive information about the skrills in the Taelons' data banks. They then comment on the disparate roles humans, Taelons and skrills play in the galactic scheme of things.
Detective work bears fruit
A call from Renee interrupts the conversation. She provides Liam with an address, telling him that Black Wednesday used one of Augur's cash cards to rent a loft. Da'an advises Liam to hurry lest Sandoval get there first.
However, Sandoval is already outside the loft, having found the site by tracking the purchase and theft of technologies from Dr. Linford's list.
In the loft, Sylvia and Noah tend to the queen. Peter, one of Sylvia's Resistance cellmates, sees Sandoval on the security monitor and informs the pair as the Taelon agent uses a high-tech lock-pick to enter the building.
Sylvia gathers up the queen while Noah and Peter collect critical equipment. The Resistance cell splits up, leaving Sandoval to burst in a moment too late. He is not amused.
Peter and Noah exit through the front door and run for their car, only to be intercepted by Liam and a belated Sandoval. Meanwhile, Sylvia makes her way out of the building and meets Renee who, pistol in hand, points her toward an escape route.
Back in Augur's lair, the computer genius is rejoicing over the return of Van Gogh when Liam returns to enlist his reluctant assistance once again. This time, Liam is the bearer of bad news, saying that Renee was supposed to meet him outside the loft, but never showed.
He asks Augur if she was the one who helped Sylvia escape. Augur tells Liam it is possible, but notes that he bugged her global. He gives Liam access to the surveillance file, and is then distracted by a call from his apparently not-so-"silent" partner. Liam traces Renee and sets off in pursuit.
Skrill versus skrill!
On the mothership, Sandoval attempts to torture the skrill queen's whereabouts out of Noah. After the renegade technician sticks to his story of not knowing where Sylvia took the queen, Sandoval leaves him to contemplate the likelihood of further torture to come.
Elsewhere, Sylvia is with the skrill queen in a lab when Liam erupts into the room, gun drawn. Although it would initially appear that Liam has the upper hand, a bizarre standoff emerges when Sylvia points her skrill at the queen. Liam drops his gun, but Sylvia shoots at him anyway.
Liam manages to dodge the blast. The pain of using the skrill leaves Sylvia off-balance, enabling Liam to knock her over. After a brief scuffle, Liam pins her to the ground, where she continues to fire her skrill in vain even though Liam tells her she's killing herself.
She responds, "You have to be willing to die for what you believe," before expiring.
As though coincidentally, Renee walks and tells Liam she and Sylvia shared the same goals. Liam suggests Renee find another way to achieve her goal of freeing humanity from the Taelons, no matter what the cost, but Renee pays his political theories little heed. Instead, she asks Liam to keep the queen as a source of weapons for the Resistance.
Liam has another plan that doesn't involve handing the queen back to the Taelons, who would keep her imprisoned and perpetually pregnant for life. He tells Renee that his research raised many questions about the skrills, and that he wants the answers.
He puts the queen to his chest. After a moment of pain, he is overcome by a vision of how beautiful the skrill homeworld was before the Taelons arrived and enslaved the species. Coming out of his trance, he tells Renee, "I know now what the Taelons did to the skrills. We can't ever allow them to do the same to us."
Humans and skrills ... and something else?
Sandoval reports to Zo'or that Sylvia's body was found with the dead skrill prototype in a parked car.
Zo'or asks about the queen, but Sandoval tells him it was nowhere to be found, Zo'or gives him a stern tongue-lashing, telling him, "You have taken an infinite supply of weapons and turned it into a finite resource which must now be conserved."
To defend himself, Sandoval asks why the Taelons don't simply obtain another queen. However, as Zo'or explains, the skrill homeworld is now in Jaridian-controlled space, and therefore closed to the Taelons for the foreseeable future.
A Taelon shuttle flies over the rain forest. In the jungle below, Liam and Renee watch as the skrill queen familiarizes herself with her new habitat and begins to birth her litter. Liam translates the queen's "speech" for Renee -- the alien creature is offering them a blessing for giving her a new home. Renee is visibly moved at the sight.
The humans leave to allow the queen to raise the first generation of skrills born in the wild on Earth in peace.
Later, Liam asks Da'an if the Taelons have any more regard for humans as they do for skrills. Da'an retorts that humans are just as callous as the Taelons, slaughtering animals for food and medical experimentation.
However, Liam thanks Da'an for making it possible for Liam to learn the truth about the skrills. When Da'an asks about the queen, Liam tells the alien that she is safe and secure, "thanks to you, Da'an."
Back in the rain forest, the newborn skrills explore their new home. A glowing form rises from the body of the queen, coalesces into the form of a bird and flies away.
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