Original release date: November 25, 2022
* * *
I look at you and all this…
It’s just so different from where I live.
[Jackman] Thomas, we’ll need you to take some time off.
That man is loose on my watch, sir.
All that’s gonna get sorted; I’m gonna see to it myself.
[electrical crackling]
Maybe you and I could come to some sort of understanding.
And I offer something in exchange.
No plan. No intel. No recon.
[whirring]
Inspector Ainsley Lowbeer, Metropolitan Police.
[screams]
♪ ♪
[water running]
[♪ Boygenius: “Me & My Dog”]
♪ I never said I’d be all right ♪
♪ Just thought I could hold myself together ♪
♪ When I couldn’t breathe, I went outside ♪
♪ Don’t know why I thought it’d be any better ♪
♪ I’m fine now ♪
♪ It doesn’t matter ♪
♪ I didn’t…
♪ ♪
Is anyone out here?
Something wrong, Ms. Fisher?
Reece, honey.
I think I might need you to take me to the doctor.
You want me to call Burton…
No, no, no.
I don’t want to worry them.
I’m sure it’s fine.
Let’s just go, you and me.
Uh…
It’s okay, hon.
Promise. I’ll talk to ’em once… once we get back.
Uh, my truck’s on the drive.
I’m afraid I’ll need your help, Reece.
I, uh…
I can’t seem to…
I’m blind again.
♪ ♪
♪ ♪
[Lowbeer] Dear me.
It seems your life has taken some decidedly unexpected turns in the past week or so, young lady.
Yes, ma’am.
[Lowbeer] And now what?
Do you have a plan?
Or do you just intend to keep parrying blows as they land, hoping for the best?
Um…
Well, I know what I’d like to do, Beatrice.
I’d like to stretch my legs a bit.
Get some fresh air.
[Beatrice] Yes, ma’am.
[Lowbeer] Now, please don’t take this wrong, Mr. Zubov, but you’ve chosen an extremely oppressive decorative scheme here.
[chuckles]
Well, then, Inspector.
Would you prefer the garden?
I’d prefer to leave altogether. And take these three young visitors with me, so we can finish our little chat alfresco, as they say.
Shall we?
[Flynne] Um, not to be disrespectful, but I’d feel a whole lot more comfortable if Wilf could join us.
How sweet. [chuckles]
You’ve already made a friend here.
Now be a sport, then, Mr. Netherton.
Do join us.
[Ella] I’m sorry to burst in on you like this without an appointment, Dee Dee.
It’s always a pleasure to see you, Ella, appointment or not. Reece, would you mind helping her up?
Yeah, sure. This way.
There you go.
Thank you.
So, what’s troubling you?
Mind if I wait outside, Mrs. Fisher?
Oh, of course not, hon.
Right.
Oh, Reece, would you tell Liz to go ahead and take her lunch break?
Yeah, sure.
[door creaks]
So… how are you feeling?
Aren’t you supposed to be on some sort of sick leave, Tommy?
Yeah. But I realized I never followed up on the evidence I collected from that incident on the bridge.
Just, uh, wanted to make sure it was all cataloged properly.
And what evidence would that be?
Weaponry the old man was carrying.
Which was what, exactly?
Well, he had a-a Glock, if I recall.
And this, uh, other doodad.
Looked a little like a flashlight.
Oh, a “doodad,” huh?
That bear any resemblance to a thingamabob?
Was anything taken into evidence?
After that SUV hit me?
The one you claim was invisible, you mean?
What are you doing?
Calling Dee Dee.
So she can take you…
You’ve been knocked sideways, Tommy.
Hard.
You need to lie down in a dark room with ice on your head and a cold beer in your hand.
You answer my question, Gladys, and I will get right on that.
Promise.
Nothing was put into evidence except your totaled cruiser.
No Glocks.
No “doodads.”
No old man, for that matter.
Just you and your wrecked car, Tommy.
Now go home.
Before I call Sheriff Jackman… so he can tell you the same damn thing, in a less loving manner.
[indistinct chatter]
[Flynne] What is this?
[Lowbeer] A Met Police training facility.
We call it The Zoo.
Why?
It’s where the animals come to play.
Completely secure from any potential R.I. surveillance or interference.
Or Klept, for that matter.
You two and Beatrice are going to have some fun.
You’re going to climb to the…
How many floors do you think they can manage, Beatrice?
Let’s try eight.
Feeling ambitious, are we?
All right, then.
Eighth floor.
Unlike Miss Fisher, you’re new to these bodies.
This exercise should get you up to speed.
What?
[Lowbeer] This is where our Met Koids are tested.
Think of it as something like what your sister believed she was playing when she first came here.
A sim, I think you call it?
Follow Beatrice. She’ll explain everything.
Well, can I go, too?
Not this time, dear.
I have a different test for you.
Shall we sit?
[Beatrice] It’s fairly straightforward, gentlemen.
We advance from floor to floor, killing or disabling everything we encounter.
Until we reach the roof.
What happens there?
[Beatrice] A surprise.
[Burton] What kind?
[Beatrice] A surprise is generally defined as “an unexpected event.”
Do you need me to define “unexpected”?
[Conner chuckles]
Don’t take this the wrong way, ma’am.
But are you, like… human?
Why do you ask?
Well, you don’t seem too concerned about potential bodily harm here.
That’s very kind of you to inquire, Lance Corporal.
Let’s just say I’m special.
By which I mean you should worry about yourselves in the coming adventure.
Let me worry about me.
[Burton] We get weapons?
Only what you can claim on the way.
Shall we?
[Conner] You got night vision, dude.
How?
Tongue to palate. Just like our haptics.
[whirring]
[grunting]
Well, that wasn’t so bad.
Are you good with numbers?
Top of the class, baby.
How many assailants did we encounter here?
Six?
There will be 12 on the next floor.
Eighteen on the one after that. And so on.
Forty-eight up top?
Only if you make it that far.
[Burton] What are these?
Your basic Koid Series 24-A.
Modified, of course, for the task at hand.
What’s a Koid?
A robot. Bipedal.
Eyes are human.
Only for verisimilitude’s sake.
Speed, intensity, and violence of action.
Your unit’s motto, if I’m not mistaken.
And?
A little more speed might be nice here, gentlemen.
Most of our trainees are already clearing the third floor by now.
♪ ♪
Yeah, Gladys.
A fucking doodad.
[powering up]
[phone ringing and buzzing]
[Tommy] Sheriff?
[Jackman] Tommy, where are you?
I, uh…
Whatever you’re doing, I need you to drop it.
Need you to come over here to Corbell Pickett’s.
Thought I was on leave, sir.
You were.
I just canceled it. Stop talking and get your ass in gear.
We got a situation on our hands over here.
I need you to help me fix it.
Copy that.
[exhales]
[soft groan]
[Bob groaning]
Oh, Lord. I’m hurt. I’m hurt bad.
Hello?
Help me.
I’m hurt real bad.
Are you okay?
[grunting]
[gunshot]
[Dee Dee] Call Tommy.
Dee Dee? What’s happening?
[line ringing]
[both grunting]
[Tommy] I’m unavailable to take your call.
[Dee Dee] Dammit, Tommy.
Pick up.
Leave a message.
I’ll return it at my earliest convenience.
[panting]
[grunting]
That’s it. That’s it. Yeah. That’s it.
That’s it.
That’s it. There you go.
There you go.
[choking]
[Bob exhales]
[panting]
[whispers] Fuck’s sake.
[groans]
Motherfucker.
Reece?
Anyone else here?
What’s happening? What’s going on?
Tell me, Dee Dee, what is going on?
[Bob] Hey. I need you to calm her down.
Or you’re both gonna get shot.
[Dee Dee] It’s all right.
I’m right here.
Where’s Reece? Why isn’t he answering…
Shh.
He just… stepped outside.
[Bob] Sit. Both of you.
On your hands.
[Bob grunts]
[chimes]
[soft grunt]
[quietly] It’s him, isn’t it?
Who?
The man from the bridge.
[Bobb] I don’t mean to be rude, ma’am.
But you need to shut your mouth.
And keep it shut.
[speaking encrypted language] Did you notice?
She sampled our fucking DNA.
How else could she be sure we’re who we claim to be?
We could bloody sample hers.
And be renditioned.
I’ve never met a senior police officer before.
A rather extraordinary individual.
They’re all like that, unfortunately.
There are…
Himself?
Yes, sir?
[Lev] I need you to access the Peripheral’s point of view.
I want to know what they’re discussing.
I’m afraid I can’t do that, Mr. Zubov.
Or won’t, rather.
[Lev] Excuse me?
[Ash] The inspector would know if we were to attempt it.
Just as she very likely knows that we’re having this rather misguided conversation.
He just ask what I think he did?
[speaking encrypted language] If we were smart, we’d be packing.
We’d be gone.
We leave, this was all for nothing.
We’d lose access to the stub and what’s inside the girl.
I’m not sure it’s worth dying for, luv.
And I’m not sure I can live with having run away from it.
How about you?
Are you steady, Ossian?
Yes. I’m fucking steady.
Well, Miss Fisher, the Aunties have managed to track down some rather interesting information.
The Aunties?
[Lowbeer] The Met’s data-sorting algorithms.
Busy little bees, buzzing about.
I imagine you’ll be happy to learn that your friend, Mr. Penske, didn’t lose his limbs in my own timeline.
But that would mean that-that… Texas…
[Lowbeer] That the R.I. must’ve opened the stub at least a decade earlier than you’ve all been assuming.
As such, significant divergences have already been occurring in our two time lines, the most disturbing of which is the Jackpot.
It appears to be happening at an accelerated rate in your world.
My assumption is the R.I. is driving this process intentionally.
To what end?
That’s a question only Cherise Nuland can answer.
[Flynne] The Texas War?
The secession, did it happen for you?
[Lowbeer] Indeed.
Both Mr. Penske and your brother went off to fight in it.
But the haptic technology implanted in their bodies was decades away from being developed in my own time line, so they fought as common soldiers.
A-And Conner didn’t get hurt?
[Lowbeer] He survived the war unscathed.
But your brother did not.
What, he got wounded?
Killed.
I thought you said details like this were impossible to retrieve.
[Lowbeer] And he was correct, for the most part.
But the Aunties are privy to archives unavailable to the general public.
Well, what about me?
The data becomes a bit spotty once the Jackpot takes off.
But it appears you married.
Had two children.
Married who?
Sheriff Thomas Constantine.
I married Tommy?
Indeed. Makes one wonder about etiquette here, doesn’t it?
Whether congratulations are in order?
Now, of course, the Aunties have told me about a Flynne Fisher who no longer exists.
But about you, my dear… I know next to nothing.
It’s rather refreshing.
I don’t suppose you’ve had many job interviews?
[Flynne] Just Forever Fab.
But it wasn’t really a job interview.
Just a drug test.
But did you pass?
Of course.
Excellent.
What I mean to say is… let’s approach this encounter as something along those lines.
A getting-to-know-each-other moment.
I’m going to ask a few questions.
Try and answer them as quickly as you can, without thinking.
Can you do that?
[grunting]
[grunting]
[Bob] A lot of people have a tough time with it… knife work.
You might laugh, but they have these how-to videos online, you know.
Slashing versus thrusting, arteries versus organs, that sort of thing.
In my experience, though, it’s all about speed.
The most amount of holes in the least amount of time.
Simple as.
When you think about it, well, that’s pretty much the opposite of how you’ve been trained, isn’t it?
Which, I imagine, could make it quite difficult to overcome.
Not to mention the other hurdles, the “thou shalt not” of it all.
Now, I’d say you’d get one good swipe, tops, before I’d open you up like a…
What do you call those…
What’s the difference between a sieve and a colander?
Are they the same, or what?
[clatters]
[muffled grunting, shouting]
[Conner whoops]
This is fucking amazing.
I told you, bruh. I’m moving here. Full-time.
What’s the surprise?
The training module isn’t considered complete until only one of us remains standing.
Surprise.
[grunting]
[Lowbeer] Greatest fear?
[Flynne] My mama dying.
[Lowbeer] Greatest strength?
[Flynne] That I don’t know when to give up.
Weakness?
Same thing.
If you could turn back time, and have none of this ever happen, would you?
[Flynne] No.
[Lowbeer] If I had the power to sever the connection between our two worlds, would you have me do it?
No.
[Lowbeer] Why not?
You thought too long on that one.
Froze up.
It happens.
Can I ask you some questions?
Like the ones you just asked me?
Let’s say three, as though I were a genie.
What’s your biggest fear?
The past.
What, like where I’m from?
[Lowbeer] Precisely.
Two down.
One remaining.
Do you actually have that power?
To cut our connection?
I’m sorry, dear, I seem to have overpromised.
It seems your brother and his friend are almost finished.
So, I’ll say goodbye and Godspeed.
Our next visit, you’ll be more active, I assure you.
[grunting]
[cracking]
Shorty… you are fucking amazing.
[Conner screams]
[laughing]
Ooh.
[Burton retches]
[whoops]
[laughing]
[Burton] Fucking Christ…
You always feel like this when you come out?
Boy, I’m gonna marry her.
[laughing]
Who?
That robot lady. [laughs]
[groans]
[phone buzzing]
[Conner exhales]
I can’t even read this.
[Flynne] What?
[exhales]
Reece took Mama to Urgent Med.
He said to come right now. Come on.
[groans] Oh, fuck. Gimme a sec.
Man the fuck up, Burton. We gotta go.
[Tommy] Hello?
Sheriff?
♪ ♪
[Corbell] What, exactly, do you think you understand?
[Jackman] That you’re upset.
I mean, how could you not…
[Corbell] I don’t think “upset” quite captures the feeling, Davis.
[Jackman] I guess not.
[sprinkler clacking]
[Corbell] What I mean is, I want to kill someone.
I want to do it with my bare fucking…
[whispering] What the fuck is he doing here?
Holster your weapon, son.
A little late to the party for it to do any kind of good.
What happened?
Well, that prisoner that you lost?
He turned up here and killed Mary Pickett.
Stole one of their vehicles.
Mr. Pickett, he, uh… he’s pretty bent out of shape about it, as you can imagine.
Right now, I need you to head up to the Fisher residence.
I want you to take Burton into custody.
Might as well grab the kid sister, too, while you’re at it.
What do the Fishers got to do with any of this?
Well, I’m still crossing my T’s and dotting my I’s on that, Tommy. But, uh… how’s this sound as a first draft?
Burton and his war buddies, they’ve been dipping their collective toe into the drug trade.
Seems that they crossed somebody they shouldn’t have.
And that somebody hired a hit man to come take them out of this world.
Now, you had this hit man character in your custody, Tommy.
But you lost him.
And he made his way over here to the Pickett residence, intent on stealing a car and making good on his escape.
Killed poor Mary Pickett rather violently in the process.
How’s that sound, buccaneer?
Like you just fucking made it up.
[Jackman laughs]
Well, that’s what you do when you’re telling a story, Tommy.
You make shit up.
Sort of like what you’ve been doing for the last ten or so years.
Pretending you don’t know the way things run around here.
Telling yourself whatever little fairytale you needed to hear so you can feel like some sort of blameless Knight of the fucking Round Table, when all the while, you working for me.
Which means you working for Corbell Pickett.
Trust me, son.
Gonna be a whole lot easier being honest with yourself.
Takes a frightful amount of energy, working to stay stone blind every fucking waking hour.
Now, goddammit, you go get Burton.
Corbell’s got some questions he wants to ask him.
No.
[sighs]
[scoffs]
Boy, that old man said your life had reached a fork in the road.
I think he was dead right about that.
Christ almighty, Tommy.
You need me to lay this out for you?
Sure. Sure, you can do the “right” thing here.
Take Corbell and I down to the station in handcuffs like two dirt dogs.
And then the three of us, we’re going to present our stories to the world.
Corbell and I, we’re gonna tell a story about how you tried to blame others for your failures, which is what the young and the feckless often do.
[sighs] You want a stick?
You panicked, Tommy.
You made some un-fucking-believable story up about how I, Clanton’s four-term elected sheriff, crashed a invisible SUV into your cruiser, made off with your prisoner, took him over here, turned him loose at Corbell Pickett’s house.
This being the same Corbell Pickett who employs some 50 to 60% of the people here in Clanton, mind you.
And then… and then, well, fuck me, Tommy.
Even now I’m getting confused.
You see where I’m going with this, I assume.
Corbell and I, we get set free with the sincerest of apologies.
You? At best, you simply lose your job at the department.
Although there may be some charges pending on you, too… false arrest and that sort of thing.
[chuckles] Or… there’s the other road.
The go-along-to-get-along road.
Where you can keep doing the fine work you’ve always done as a lawman.
Maybe even pick up some other responsibilities, too… with the appropriate remunerations, of course.
Or you could just try being adult for a fucking change.
[sighs heavily]
You don’t have a choice, Tommy. You see that, right?
Because my story might not be true… it sure as hell sounds true.
It’s gonna beat your story every goddamn time.
So why don’t we stop dicking around with one another, and you go fetch me Burton Fisher.
Along with that little sister.
[grunting on video]
[Beatrice] As you can see, they discovered and utilized their augmentations with admirable dispatch, networking to share visual and aural input.
Which would imply an overlap with their own rudimentary haptic implants.
What did you make of them?
Their characters, I mean?
[Beatrice] Brave. Assertive. Resolute.
The brother is likely the more predictable and dependable.
But I’d be marginally more inclined to turn to his friend in a crisis.
Why?
Ma’am?
Well, if the brother is more predictable and dependable, why would you turn to the friend?
I’m afraid I lack specific data on that, Inspector.
The decision was made in my deep neural network, below any level of consciousness.
Interesting.
And the young woman?
[Lowbeer] Still an open question.
Which I hope to answer shortly.
What is it?
Cherise Nuland is downstairs, requesting an audience.
You were expecting her?
I lifted the veil, ever so slightly, on our visit to the Zubov residence, allowing us to be surveilled as we arrived.
But I certainly didn’t anticipate Dr. Nuland to react with such alacrity.
Have her sent up, please.
This should be quite informative.
[breathing heavily]
You fucking loser.
How the fuck you gonna live with this?
Huh? I mean…
How the fuck you gonna live with this?
[sniffles]
Now what?
We wait.
[Dee Dee] For?
I need to kill two people.
And it would appear that one of them is on the way here.
You’re talking about my children, aren’t you?
Yes, ma’am, I’m afraid I am.
[chimes]
[tires screeching]
[Flynne] Mama’s not answering.
[Burton] Reece, neither.
[phone chimes]
Reece. “Your mother is asking you to come as quickly as possible.”
“Your mother”?
Yeah, that’s fucking weird.
Can you link up with him?
Oh, shit.
What?
[Leon] I can’t get a read on his vitals.
I’m almost tempted to call the police, Inspector.
The Uncanny Valley Statute is rather clear that Peripherals should never operate as autonomous beings.
Beatrice exists under a special waiver to the UVS.
Hmm. Of course.
Doesn’t look like the R.I.’s handiwork.
Nice to meet you, Beatrice.
Pleasure is mine, ma’am.
[Cherise] Know what’s startling?
We’ve found that a lingering effect of the Jackpot is that now the vast majority of Koids have been modified to resemble a missing personal connection.
Siblings.
Colleagues.
Not, as a rule, parents.
Which is intriguing, is it?
It’s as if there’s something natural about losing a mother or father that makes it easier for us to accept.
But a child?
A daughter… for instance?
I’m so sorry, Beatrice.
I’m going to have to ask you to power down now.
And please scrub the past five minutes from your memory.
Powering down now. Commencing scrub.
Pleased with yourself?
I’m curious. Why keep it a secret?
It would complicate our relationship.
Yes, I rather suppose it would.
Why are you here, Doctor?
Something of great value has been stolen from me.
And I seek redress from the law.
I know you’re uneasy with this.
Uneasy?
Fucking terrified is what I am.
[speaking encrypted language] It’s not just the Klepts we’re crossing here.
There’s the Met Police now too and either one of them would end us…
Want me to do it?
You realize what this could mean?
We’re the only ones who know.
Aelita knows.
Aelita’s dead…
Or gone to ground so thoroughly she might as well be.
This is ours. For the taking.
How do we access the bacteria? How do we sequence it?
All we’ll need to do is hire someone in the stub to…
Himself, luv.
Tell me that won’t be part of the pleasure.
Stealing it right out from under his arrogant fucking…
[Lev] Arrogance is a form of stupidity.
Wouldn’t you agree?
It could seem a bit arrogant, for instance, to assume that one’s encryption is unbreakable.
Given that, historically, the supposed impregnability of any particular code has always proven disappointingly short-lived.
Run to Daddy’s study.
Fetch him a knife.
Which one?
[Lev] Any will do.
I’m in a bit of a quandary here.
Part of me, naturally enough, wants to destroy both of you.
My inner child, I suppose you could call it.
Raging. Petulant. Vengeful.
But the part of me with a cooler head realizes how much I need you.
Your skill set, certainly.
And now, it would appear, your secrets, too.
Also, I like you.
Well, you, Ash.
Ossian I could take or leave, depending on my mood. But you…
You have a Klept’s heart, whether you realize it or not.
Proud.
Scheming.
Aggressive.
[speaking encrypted language] And yes: arrogant.
So it’s all a bit up in the air…
I fear.
What I should do…
[panting]
My favorite.
Ah!
And it’s a beauty, my boy.
May I watch, Daddy?
[Lev] I think not.
Run along to the kitchen. Nanny’s made pudding.
We’re… very sorry, sir.
Shut up, Ossian.
Tell me what you’re up to.
Or I’ll kill him. You have ten seconds.
Aelita thought she was working with the polt’s brother.
She planned to download the stolen R.I. files into his haptic implants.
Storing them in the stub, in other words, where they’d be untraceable.
Rather brilliant, I think you’ll agree.
Except for the fact it was the sister piloting the Peripheral.
And the girl doesn’t have implants.
So her headset translated the data into bacterial DNA.
Began to colonize her brain.
What were you hoping to do with that data?
Sell it to the highest bidder.
I don’t believe you.
[gasps]
[breathing shakily]
Give it to the Neoprims.
Why in the fucking hell would you want to do that?
So they can burn this world down.
And build a new one in its place.
You’re a fool.
A romantic fool.
If you try to double-cross me again… I will have no choice but to carve you up and feed you to my little beauties.
[growls]
But I do admire the rest of your plan.
Let’s proceed, shall we?
[console chiming]
Every single vector of the Jackpot was weaponized by the same disruptor.
Human nature.
Now, it might’ve manifested itself as selfishness or venality or simple stupidity, but at the bottom, it all amounted to the same trait: our persistent, self-destructive resistance to acting for a collective good.
May I?
Please.
The R.I. was subject to a critical data breach a few nights ago, at the hand of an R.I. employee and a Peripheral piloted from within a stub.
The presence of a Zubov associate at a subsequent crime scene connected to the breach points definitively to Klept involvement.
We have reason to believe they were targeting our neural adjustment mechanism, which, as you know, is a highly sensitive area of research.
[Lowbeer] So you’re telling me that the data that’s been stolen from you, it would document the existence of this mechanism?
It would.
And that’s what you fear?
Backlash and repudiation, should knowledge of this become public?
Of course.
But even more so, a potential hack of the mechanism… to employ it in a less benign manner.
A possibility already inherent in this technology?
Well…
I think you’ll agree, Inspector, that a hammer is a very useful tool.
It can also be a deadly weapon, in the wrong hands.
I believe you met with Lev Zubov recently?
I imagine he had quite an interesting tale of his recent adventures in the R.I.’s stub.
“The R.I.’s”? You claim ownership?
Well, I created it, didn’t I?
For use as a laboratory to develop this technology.
I don’t imagine I need to tell you how dangerous it might be for the Klepts to gain control of it.
What are you asking of me?
Destroy the Zubovs, Flynne Fisher, and everyone associated with them.
Both here, and in the stub.
[laughing] You make it sound so simple.
As if I could merely wave a wand.
There’s precedent, you’ll concede.
The Samsonovs.
Their entire clan… [imitates explosion] erased from the face of the Earth.
It was quite an awe-inspiring spectacle.
An entirely different situation.
Mm… Was it?
Sedition? I should think so.
“Inciting violence against a lawful authority, with the intent to overthrow it”?
♪ If I had a hammer ♪♪
You’ll need to absorb and process this all, obviously.
But you should know: I only share this with you because I’m confident you have the sophistication and perspicacity to grasp all that’s at stake here.
Come to my lair next time. Hmm?
Tea, if you’d like.
[door closes]
It’s for money? What you’re doing?
There’s money involved.
But that’s not why I’m here.
Why, then?
[sighs] I have a daughter of my own.
I’d like to keep her alive, if I could.
Someone’s threatening to harm her if you don’t kill my children?
In a nutshell.
[Ella] My mother always said, “Only a fool sees the world as either-or.”
Which is an admirably simple thought for simple folks living in a simple place.
But unfortunately, none of that’s at play here at the moment.
You imagine there are only two options.
Either your daughter has to die, or my children will, and that’s the end of it.
You’re saying there’s another option?
I am.
But I can just listen to you, to the sound of your voice, and tell you’re not the man to consider it.
Try me.
You could die.
[brakes screech]
What the fuck are you doing?
Fuck.
Why are we stopped?
Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast.
We need to get a read on the situation.
If we don’t move now, Mama’s gonna be next. You know that.
There’s a killer in there, just set a trap.
We rush in, we all die.
Burton…
This is the one fucking thing I’m good at, Flynne.
So right now, I just need you to trust me to do it right.
Fuck.
Take these, go that way around the car.
[Bob] Let me get this straight.
So, my not wanting to die here, that makes me a fool?
Not just a fool.
Cowardly, too.
And selfish.
Selfish to the point of evil.
I’m starting to get the impression that you don’t like me very much, Mrs. Fisher.
[Burton over earbud] You see the three heat sigs?
And the colder one on the floor?
That’s Reece.
[Conner] So we got Dee Dee, your mama, and our target.
Which is a little too eeny-meeny-miny-moe for my taste.
[Flynne] He’s probably the one on the right, but I’m not sure.
We got to get him to move.
See if you can link up with Reece again.
Trigger his ANS.
[Conner] Fuck that, Burton.
He’d be connecting to a corpse.
Get the body to twitch, and maybe the old man will think Reece is still alive.
He’ll try to finish him off, and then we can tag him.
Bruh, are you hearing me? Leon would feel it.
Yeah. And Reece would do the same thing for us, if he was in our position.
Why the fuck are you two still talking? Let’s get this done.
[Burton] Flynne, tell us when the target’s clear.
[Flynne] It’s him. He’s moving.
Execute.
[gasps]
[groans]
[groaning]
Mama?
Oh.
[panting]
Lights out.
[three gunshots]
I need that old man alive, Davis.
There’s some things I want to do to him.
[Jackson] Oh, I understand, Corbell.
We’re gonna do everything we can. You know that.
She was a real wonderful woman, Corbell. I can’t imagine.
[Tommy] Think I might’ve come up with a pretty good one, Sheriff.
Wanted to run it by you.
Let’s say the old man came here.
Killed Mary.
And Mr. Pickett there, he called the police.
You were first on the scene, Sheriff.
Because even after four terms, you still take your job seriously.
And we all appreciate that.
Tommy, what in the fuck do you think you’re doing…
The old man was still here.
Armed with this .45.
And when you drew your own weapon?
Well, he went and shot you.
Multiple times, I’m afraid.
All right, easy. You need to calm down, Thomas.
I’m already too calm, Sheriff.
That’s what’s scaring me.
It’s like you said.
Ain’t got much of a choice, now, do I?
Tommy, don’t!
Well, fuck me.
I did not see that coming.
Not by a mile.
Now… that calm you were talking about?
I think you need to lower your gun until it comes back.
So we can talk this thing through.
Come to an understanding here.
You don’t really think that old man would’ve let you live, now, do you?
[Corbell] What I don’t think… is that you have the necessary balls to pull this off on your own, young man.
[chuckles] Or the bullets.
The fuck’s that supposed to be?
Oh, it’s a doodad, you arrogant piece of shit.
[thunder rumbling]
♪ ♪
[Conner] You die, it’s for real.
I die and I save my family.
I want you to kill him.
Wolf!
I’ll tell you everything. Give you my word.
Deputy. EMTs got a pulse.
For who?
All we need are the secrets inside the girl’s head.
[bell clanging]
No!
♪ ♪
♪ ♪
