Robbie meets Cade in the
woods. He cuts the palm of his hand with a knife, proving he’s not an alien.
According to Robbie, strange
things are happening in Normal. Several healthy kids have died recently.
After a police car passes
by, Cade asks if there’s a place where they can meet later without being
noticed. Robbie suggests Rogers Park.
Cade departs, so Robbie goes
to see Laura. Her dad isn’t home, and she invites him up to her room. He
gets the house key from under a plant on the porch and goes inside.
Robbie is excited that Cade
Foster is actually here. That means there really are aliens in Normal.
Television-based reality
Laura is skeptical.
"It sounds like a really
bad movie," she says. "If I didn’t love you, I’d definitely have you committed."
"That is the Cade Foster
dilemma in a nutshell," he observes.
She tells him he’s freaky,
but she loves him. When he asks why, she tells him it’s because he’s weird,
smart and makes her feel like the only girl on the planet.
They begin to make out. Her
head begins to hurt, just like Sondra’s.
Dad-us interruptus
Before anything fatal can
happen, Laura’s father barges in. He chases Robbie out and orders him not
to come back.
Eddie
has checked the papers and found three other kids who have died of unusual
neurological malfunctions. There’s nothing unusual about the kids, but
according to the coroner, two of them had procaine in their system.
Procaine, Eddie tells Cade,
is an ester composed of two B-complex vitamins. It’s not usually found
in the human body, but it’s not toxic except in massive doses.
Moreover, the chemical is
water-soluble, and this week’s Nostradamus verse refers to water. Cade
theorizes that the substance might be in the town water supply, and Eddie
agrees to check it out.
Cade meets Robbie at the
park and tells him about the other deaths. Robbie has convinced Sondra
to meet Cade at Laura’s house.
Sondra sits next to the pool
and tearfully describes what happened. She tells Cade about her headache
and Carson’s gruesome death.
Laura has now read some of
Cade’s journals. She jokes that her Dad could be an alien.
"Your dad is a jerk," Robbie
says, not an alien. He saw Mr. Bennett cut his hand at a family barbeque
a few months ago, and he bled for several hours – a sure sign he’s not
a fast-healing Gua.
Mr. Bennett pulls up in his
car, and Robbie and Cade flee. He glares suspiciously after them and demands
to know what’s going on.
~
Where’s Dr. Ruth when
you need her?
Returning to the park, Cade
asks Robbie to ask other teens if they’re having problems with sex. Robbie
sees a glaring flaw in this plan -- he’s a friendless geek and nobody wants
to talk to him about sex -- but agrees to try.
Robbie asks Cade why he’s
given up everything to battle the Gua, and Cade tells him he’s trying to
prove his innocence.
"How do you prove something
that most people can’t see?" Robbie asks.
Cade asks Robbie why he believes
in the aliens. Robbie has two reasons: he has seen some "crazy stuff,"
and he believes in Cade Foster.
"Until you and I get some
proof," Cade notes, "we’re both insane."
Cade checks in with Eddie
and tells him about the possible death-by-lust scenario. Eddie has tested
the town water, and there’s no procaine in it.
He’s learned that procaine
facilitates the transfer of electrical ions. But how did Carson get it
in his system?
Morality in sudden death
Laura and Dad are arguing
by the pool. "It’s sad what happened to Carson," he tells her, "but Sondra
learned her lesson."
Cade goes to the local hospital.
He introduces himself the coroner as "Simon Easterly", from the Southern
Illinois Medical Examiner’s office.
"Easterly" asks the coroner
for a look at Carson’s autopsy report, but Dr. Crane is a stickler for
paperwork. No form, no luck, no exceptions.
He apologizes for bothering
her. As he turns to leave, she asks what happened to the other reports
she sent to his office.
Cade is suitably mystified,
and asks for more information. She tells him the reports went to both the
police and the medical examiner’s office, and that she finds the deaths
mysterious.
"Young people in perfect
people don’t usually die of brain aneurysms," she comments.
She’s also found devices
in the medulla oblongatas of the dead teenagers. She shows him a strange
techno-organic device she found in Carson McAuliffe’s brain. It looks like
a drill bit.
Cade asks if he can borrow
it for testing, but she refuses. The devices taken from the other three
teenagers’ brains have vanished along with her reports.
After thanking her, Cade
leaves. She then calls the medical examiner’s office and checks his identity.
Cade passes this information
on to Eddie, who informs him that the medulla oblongata is important to
the production of hormones. Their conversation is cut off when a police
cruiser pulls up.
"Mind popping down to the
station with me?" asks the officer. "I’ve got a few questions."
A case of faked identity
Cade’s driver license doesn’t
completely match his identity. It confirms his name is "Simon Easterly",
but it’s a Wisconsin driver’s license.
He passes off the discrepancy
by claiming to be a private eye working for Carson McAuliffe’s parents.
He describes what he knows about the case, hoping to get a reaction from
the cop.
Officer Olden agrees that
the deaths seem unnatural. He’s said he’s investigated the other deaths,
and is puzzled by them.
Olson lets Cade go, telling
the thief to talk to him first if he finds out anything else.
Robbie is not making much
progress asking other teenagers about their sex lives.
Mr. Bennett discovers his
daughter packing a bag and preparing to leave.
"Ever since Mom died," she
says, "you’ve been different." She tells him Robbie is trying to find out
what is happening, and that he’s brought Cade Foster in to help him.
Enraged by the mention of
Robbie, Mr. Bennett calls her a slut. She slaps him, cutting his cheek
with her nails. He heals instantly.
"You are staying in this
room until I get back," he tells her. "And you are going to be very sorry."
He locks her in.
Officer Olden drops Cade
off at his car. He calls and tells Eddie he’s okay, and that the cop bought
his cover story -- maybe a little too easily.
~
Get horny, get fried
Eddie’s learned more about
the deaths. The first teen died in the back row of a movie house, and the
others died at the local lover’s lane.
They were all having sex,
Cade suggests. "Or at least trying to," says Eddie.
Neither of them understands
what the Gua are up to. This could be an experiment in population control,
but that doesn’t explain the last verse of Nostradamus’ quatrain.
The best way to learn more,
Cade decides, is to break into the coroner’s office and use her lab to
study the device. Eddie is not thrilled by this plan.
Bennett has a word with Officer
Olden. Playing the outraged father perfectly, he asks the cop to investigate
Foster "and make sure he stays away from my house."
Cade and Eddie visit the
coroner’s office that night. They find the device, and Eddie drops it in
a procaine solution, and it begins extruding filaments.
As they stare at it in wonder,
Officer Olden walks in with his gun drawn. "Hands up," he tells them.
It’s like they’re
in a slasher movie
Robbie lets himself into
Laura’s room. Rather than fleeing immediately, they bring each other up
to date, and Robbie suggests that Mr. Bennett may have been replaced by
a Gua clone in the car accident that killed Laura’s mother.
Cade tells Officer Olden,
"You’re making a mistake." They have evidence that somebody is experimenting
on the teens of Normal.
Olden asks, "What kind of
evidence?"
"Take a look at that, man,"
says Eddie. Olden stares at the device.
"I’m such an idiot," Cade
says. He’s just made the connection between "contained waters" and the
Bennett’s swimming pool.
"Let’s go," Olden says.
Laura stops to get a picture
of her mother before she leaves. She turns to the door to find her father
standing in it, with Robbie lying unconscious at his feet.
"I warned you," he tells
her.
The secret pool lab
He takes them to a secret
lab in the pool maintenance hut. He ties up Laura and straps Robbie into
a machine.
Bennett tells Robbie, "I
never considered you a prime test subject. Tonight that’s going to change."
Eddie, Cade, and Officer
Olden arrive at the Bennett house.
Mr. Bennett gets out one
of the neural devices. He explains the procedure to Robbie.
"You should be happy," he
says. "We’re going to be seeing a lot of each other at the pool."
Eddie tests the pool water,
and finds procaine in it.
Mr. Bennett tests his drill.
He assures Robbie that he won’t remember the procedure – "none of them
do" – and initiates the implant sequence.
Robbie screams, attracting
the attention of Cade and the others. They rush into the lab as the procedure
ends.
"It’s over, Bennett" says
Olden. At first, Bennett thinks Olden has captured Cade, but Olden continues.
"It’s one thing to experiment
on humans with that device," he says, "but not on us. I can’t let that
happen."
Olden and Bennett struggle.
Several shots are fired, but Bennett wrenches Olden’s gun away and stabs
him.
Cade dives for the gun and
shoots Bennett. Before he dissolves, Bennett staggers to his lab computer
and enters a command dissolving all the implants.
Cade stares at Olden. "You’re
Gua?" he asks.
Olden nods.
A taste of their own medicine
Eddie helps Robbie out of
the machine. He’s all right.
Cade asks Olden, "Why did
you help us?" Olden says that he was just doing his job before, but he
has now chosen to fight against the Gua mission.
He tells Cade that the Gua
are ready to destroy humanity, but its leaders are worried that the Gua
will be consumed by sexual urges in their hybrid bodies. He has realized
that the devices Bennett was testing were intended to control the Gua.
With that revelation, he
dies and dissolves.
Later, Robbie gets a tour
of Eddie’s trailer. He likes the paranoid hacker’s lifestyle.
Eddie reports there’s no
trace of the Gua devices left. Robbie comments, "No proof, huh Cade?"
"I guess that means we’re
still insane," Cade says.
As Cade leaves, he watches
Robbie erase the "Ab-" on the "Ab-Normal, Illinois" sign. This reminds
our hero that his lonely battle is beginning to get some results, and that
he is getting closer to his goal of defeating the Gua.
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