Cade wakes up shirtless and covered with medical monitors in a luxurious suite. He pulls them off and explores, finding himself in a high-security facility.

He finds a command center. A huge monitor tracks "alien surveillance", and the people in the center are talking about capturing aliens and discovering their hideouts.

They turn and stare at Cade as he edges into the room. Their leader – Agent Bill Blaylock – welcomes Cade.

"Glad to see our hero’s finally awake," he says.

Vindicated

Cade doesn’t believe Blaylock’s story. He’s certain this is just another Gua experiment, and he’s not playing their game this time.

He tries to leave, but Blaylock won’t let him go. As agents close in on him, he grabs a letter spike and holds it up to Blaylock’s throat.

The hostage offers to prove he’s human by demonstrating that he lacks Gua regenerative powers. He offers his hand, and Cade stabs it with the letter spike.

Blaylock’s hand doesn’t heal. "I believe I pass the test," he says.

He suggests that Cade get some more rest. Cade returns to his suite, where he sniffs his food and coffee for poison.

She’s from the government, and she’s here to help you

Cade gets a visitor: Dr. Heather LeGuin, a psychiatrist who wants to help Cade recover from his long ordeal. She’s brought his Uncle Harry with her.

Harry assures him that he’s been in hiding with the NDA. He proves his identity by remembering details of Cade’s high school hockey prowess.

Cade goes to Blaylock and demands to be allowed to leave. Blaylock doesn’t want to allow it, but LeGuin recommends letting Cade go where he wants to.

Blaylock reluctantly agrees, but orders an Agent Mitchell to provide armed escort.

Cade wants to go back to his home in Chicago. Mitchell and LeGuin accompany him on the five-hour drive to Illinois.

The NDA has convinced the couple that now owns the house to spend the evening elsewhere. Cade wanders around, remembering Hannah and the experiment that the Gua inflicted upon him.

In the meantime, Blaylock is worried about a recent shootout with the Gua in the Fermi Labs. He wants more information about the Gua, and would like to learn more about Cade’s supporters and allies.

That request – and the sinister-looking Agent Mitchell – stirs Cade’s suspicions again. He stalks out of Blaylock’s office and back to his suite.

He picks up the phone, but the operator on the line makes him too nervous to call anyone. He tears his room apart looking for bugs.

Later, he talks with Dr. LeGuin. She shows him Rorschach pictures, and he tells her they all look like aliens.

LeGuin understands that he still doesn’t believe what’s happening. She tries to reassure him, telling him, "You’ve crossed the Rubicon, you’ve made it."

Cade suggests that this is yet another attempt to weasel the book of Nostradamus out of him. LeGuin assures him that they’re not interested in the book.

She also suggests that Cade is having trouble turning off his paranoia now that he’s succeeded in his mission. She thinks he’s still in denial about Hannah’s death and the destruction of his life.

LeGuin thinks he’ll accept the miracle of his survival and begin building a new life. Cade tells her that he will never be satisfied, and will never get back what he lost.

The kindly old evil government agent

Cade goes up on the roof to think. Blaylock visits him there, telling him that he’s a true hero who thinks about what he’s doing and "never takes the end for granted."

All Blaylock wants from Cade is to debrief him for a few more days. Then Cade can take a much-needed rest.

A man sneaks into Cade’s bedroom and grabs him. Cade wakes up and grabs back, only to discover that his assailant is Eddie.

Eddie has come to rescue Cade. Just as Cade feared, the NDA facility is a Gua trap.

They flee, and find themselves trapped in the parking garage. Pursuing government agents gun both of them down, and Eddie dissolves.

Then Cade wakes up. Eddie and the escape were just a dream.

Blaylock still can’t find Eddie. LeGuin helps Cade talk him into leaving a message on some of the web sites Eddie regularly scans.

After Blaylock calls in Agent Olivia Tomalin, an NDA computer expert, she hacks into several hospital and law enforcement sites and plants a web page with a phone number on it.

She also types in a secret message for Cade on her computer. She tells him he’s in danger, and that she wants to meet him on the rooftop at 2 a.m. that night.

Mitchell drops by just as she finishes the message. He wishes Cade luck in finding Eddie.

Would the evil alien please stand up?

At 2 a.m., Cade goes to the roof. Both Tomalin and Mitchell meet him there, and each accuses the other of being a Gua assassin.

Tomalin proves to be an alien. She knocks down Mitchell, grabs Cade, and prepares to give him an eye poke that would put the Three Stooges to shame.

Unfortunately, she pauses to shout, "For the Gua!" That gives Mitchell just enough time to shoot her dead.

Cade is shaken by the attempt on his life. The next day, he tells LeGuin that he doesn’t know what to believe any more.

Moreover, Cade's anger is starting to worry him. He’s won, so why doesn’t he feel any peace?

"You can find peace again if you want it badly enough," LeGuin says. "Do you?"

Cade tells her he wants to feel safe.

Alarms go off. Blaylock reports that the Gua have tried to bomb the Pentagon, and that it’s time to make their invasion public knowledge.

"The public needs a hero," he tells Cade. "The president wants it to be you."

Man of the hour

Cade is nervous, but the press conference is a hero’s welcome. Flashbulbs pop, hands clap and the reporters pepper him with respectful questions.

Afterwards, LeGuin congratulates him. He tells her it feels good to finally tell the world what’s happening.

LeGuin continues to boost Cade’s self-esteem by getting him a glass of wine and staring worshipfully at him. She confesses an attraction to him, but somehow resists the urge leap into a steamy sex scene with him.

Harry meets Cade on the roof. He gives Cade a more manly kind of validation by presenting the dog tags Cade’s father wore in Vietnam.

He takes Cade down to see Blaylock. Blaylock shows Cade that day’s edition of the Detroit Ledger, where the headlines are all about him and the alien menace.

Blaylock thinks it’s time Cade had some rest and recreation, saying that it will take the Gua weeks to mobilize. Harry suggests a fishing trip on a quiet tropical island.

Cade thinks about it. As Harry reads out loud from the paper, Cade stares into a mirror and reviews everything he’s experienced over the last few days.

"Is anything wrong?" LeGuin asks.

He assures her nothing is wrong and steps out of the room, promising to return momentarily.

Mitchell follows him down the hall. Cade begins to run.

He arrives in the parking garage and throws himself against the chain-link fence, screaming "Let me out!"

The door opens. Cade flees through it, and it closes in the faces of the pursuing agents.

All the news that’s not faked by an alien conspiracy

Cade buys a paper and confirms real Detroit Ledger has nothing about aliens in it. He calls Eddie.

When Eddie picks him up, he tells his sidekick that the scenario was too perfect. It was everything he wanted to be, so it had to be a fake.

Even so, he nearly took up the offer of a vacation.

Blaylock and the other Gua agents confront Joshua, who claims that keeping Cade was not part of the experiment protocol.

He tries to cow the others with his authority as head of the Gua assembly. He’s trumped, though, when the agent playing Uncle Harry reveals himself to be a member of the ruling Guahead from the home planet.

"Uncle Harry" arrests Joshua for sabotaging the Gua invasion.