After infiltrating the hospital under the "Howard" alias, Cade is wheeled into the emergency room.

A handsome young doctor -- we'll learn later his name is Dr. Reed -- is tending a man with an injured leg. As he works, the paramedics tell him that "John Howard" is a transient picked up with a diabetic medicalert bracelet, a stink of malt liquor and a terrifyingly low glucose level of 39.

Reed thanks and dismisses the paramedics, calling for another glucose check and an IV.

As Cade is wheeled into a ward, he muses about what has brought him here.

Nostradamus's prophecies speak of an ally that can be found "where angels touch grace." Cade infers that this refers to Grace General Hospital in South Central Los Angeles, and that the ally is a patient there.

Cade isn't feeling good, though, and it's not just the insulin. He's wondering what he's doing here -- he's already avenged his wife, so what's his motivation for carrying on? Eddie can't offer much help. He doesn't have much faith in humanity, he says, but he does have faith in Cade.

Later, as most of the ward sleeps, Cade turns to the semi-comatose man next to him.

"What say we have some fun and put one over on the nurses?" he asks, attaching his medical monitor to the man and sneaking out of the ward.

After swiping surgical scrubs, he heads for the emergency room, sharing an elevator with a suspicious-looking older doctor. Noticing Cade's hospital slippers, the doctor grabs him as he leaves the elevator, pulling out a pair of socks and giving Cade a stern lecture about proper hygiene. Then the doctor vanishes into the operating room, grumbling about the incompetence of younger doctors.

As Cade surreptitiously looks through the charts in the emergency room, a friendly nurse warns him to be careful of the older doctor, Dr. Markowski. Cade takes the warning, then asks her for directions to room 507. There's a patient there he wants a closer look at. The nurse is baffled -- there couldn't be a patient in 507. It's in the west wing. which has been abandoned for two years.

Still, once Cade gets to the dark and almost deserted wing, there is a patient in the room. Even though the chart tells Cade she's blind, she has no trouble seeing him standing there, even with her milky white eyes.

The young woman's name is Alikah, and she's been blind since she was six months old. She's also a tough girl from South Central LA, and whether Cade's a robber, a rapist, or just crazy, she's not taking any grief from him. She soon calls for a nurse, scaring Cade off.

After hiding elsewhere in the ward, Cade places a call to Eddie. He's got a theory about Alikah -- the chart said she had eye surgery two weeks ago, and Cade hopes it may have not only restored her sight but given her the ability to see aliens.

Meanwhile, Alikah goes to sleep, and dreams of being in a dark room. There are bandages on her face, which she removes, only to see a small child in the next room. His eyes are gone. Is it a dream or a repressed memory?

The next morning, Dr. Markowitz is checking out the patient next to Cade, who's returned to his bed and is doing his best not to be seen. Cade notices that that for all his gruffness, Markowitz seems kind to the old man.

Dr. Reed checks up on Alikah, who's progressing nicely. Bright light still blinds her sensitive eyes, but he thinks she's ready for a cornea transplant and so moves the operation forward. After her strange conversation with Cade the previous night, Alikah's anxious to get out of her room and look around a little, so Reed agrees to let her have lunch in the hospital cafeteria. She can't help noticing he looks a little strange, a bit ... inhuman.

As Alikah's nurse wheels her to the cafeteria, Dr. Markowitz waylays them for help with a patient that needs tending down the hall. After some argument, the nurse agrees to leave Alikah for a couple of minutes.

As Alikah waits, she's smells something -- the malt liquor Cade doused himself with for his cover story as a transient. She follows the smell to Cade's ward and asks for straight answers.

Cade explains the Nostradamus prophecy, which nearly convinces her that he's insane. Her dream still bothers her, though, and she describes it to Cade. She's not sure what to think -- the people who restored her sight look pretty good to her -- but she's willing to consider a deal Cade offers. If he can find the place she dreamed of, she'll believe him.

Later, a nurse shows Dr. Reed the test results on "John Howard". His blood alcohol content is much too low for a drunk, and his blood sugar levels are much too normal for a diabetic. Reed smells a rat, and orders a genetic test to identify him.

When night falls, Cade slips out again and follows Alikah's recollections to the operating room. It's deep in the abandoned wing, but he finds it.

It's an abbatoir, an operating room from hell, full of blood, bones and body parts. Cade finds the child Alikah "dreamed" of, and its eyes have indeed been plucked out. There are also people working, and as Cade slips into an observation room, he sees that they've attached a tentacle to a stump of a man's leg.

Minutes later he's back at Alikah's room, bundling her up and preparing to get her out of there. She still doesn't want to go -- Nostradamus' prophecies don't mean much to her, and she wants her new corneas. Cade tries to point out her responsibility to help stop the horrors.

What he's seen tonight has restored his sense of purpose, but he isn't making much headway with her. She lost her sight and her mother to bullets from the streets, and now, as far as she is concerned, her only responsibility is to herself.

Stymied, he promises to try to come back for her tomorrow. On the way out, he's stopped by Markowitz, who has figured out Cade's no doctor. In fact, Markowitz thinks Cade's an investigator, and he wants to help. According to Markowitz, the hospital has gone to hell since it was bought out last year.

But before Markowitz can tell Cade much more, he crumples. Dr. Reed has stabbed him in the back. As two orderlies grab Cade, Reed asks him, "Has anybody ever told you you have beautiful eyes?"

When we next see Cade, he's strapped to another gurney, but this time he's being taken to the alien operating room.

Dr. Reed joins him there, gloating. Cade's convinced him of the Earth concept of serendipity, he says. After all, this was where the Assembly planned to bring Cade for examination in the first place, and now here he is. Reed also explains that the aliens are doing their experiments here because nobody cares what happens to people in the inner cities.

Meanwhile, Alikah has remembered that, in her dream, it was Dr. Reed who hid the mutilated child from her view. It seems the charming young doctor isn't so charming after all.

She tries to escape the ward, but it's locked. Hoping to find Cade, she begins to retrace her path back to the operating room.

Cade's eyes have been taped open and Dr. Reed is putting blinding red drops into them to prepare them for surgery. Telling Cade that "Everybody here wants a piece of you -- literally", he is just about to slice off Cade's cornea when Alikah calls out from down the hall.

Reed goes to her, meeting her at a locked gate and telling her to return to her bed. She refuses, accusing him of atrocities and dousing him with alcohol. Apparently considering himself safe with a gate between them, he taunts her even as she gets out her lighter -- until she drops it in the pool of alcohol, setting off a conflagration that surrounds him.

Alikah frees Cade, but as they try to escape a horribly burned Reed attacks. He chases them back into the operating room, blinding Alikah with the bright lights of the surgery. Cade's also blind, but he's got a cleaver, and as Alikah frantically directs him by the sounds of Reed's movements, he manages to sink it into Reed's neck. Reed still almost strangles him before dying and dissolving in typical alien style.

Later, Cade meets Eddie, who reports the west wing has been burned down and the hospital staff has disappeared. Cade's not unhappy. After all, he's found his new ally.

Alikah doesn't agree. She's no hero, and she wants to finally see her sister and brother. Besides, she points out, Cade's got his sense of purpose back.

"Check your prophecy again, Foster," she tells him. "I've fulfilled my mission."

Thinking about it, Cade realizes she might be right. "I'm not fighting aliens to be clearing my name," he writes in his journal, "or to avenge my wife's death, not even because Nostradamus predicted it. I'm fighting them because it's who I am, and I won't give up until I win."

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