This episode opens with some light hearted roommate banter between Kirsten and Camille, but lays the groundwork for the plot when Camille sees that someone anonymously sent Kirsten a copy of Catcher in the Rye.
At the Stitchers Lab, the team finds out about a conspiracy blogger who was ex-CIA, and claimed to have classified documents to prove his theories. He died of a heart attack, but whether it was natural is up for debate, especially since his last blog post boasted of new info that he’d share that evening.
When Kirsten stitches into the blogger’s mind, she is swarmed by words and sentences floating through the surrounding scenery, and all having to do with different conspiracies. After a little filtering the words disappeared, but the random influx of stimuli did not. After a little Oz reference, she sees him do something with jumper cables.
Fischer is called in, and he, Kirsten and Cameron go to the crime scene. What she saw in the stitch with the jumper cables was the blogger's way of opening a secret compartment with tapes, files, hard drives, etc.... Kirsten starts looking through the stuff, and finds a file that she thinks is what he was going to post that night, but as she pulls it out, it sets off a security mechanism that causes the whole place to blow up.
Back at the lab, they are not able to read what’s in the file, because it is on a floppy disk, which they don’t have the technology to read. Hah! There is, however, a series development in this episode. Evidently, there will not be the second stitch, which is what seems to lead to the solving the crime in previous episodes. How refreshing.
Kirsten confides in Cameron that she saw the same personal object (a teddy bear) in two different people’s memories. He suggests that it must be one of her own. This causes her to remember a time she was using one of Ed’s computers. When he told her it was time for her to get off the computer so that he could use it, she complained that he had more in the garage. He countered that they were too old and slow. So, Kirsten goes to what looks like his old garage (although this contradicts all of his things being packed up and sent to her house), and finds an old computer. She sets it up, puts in the disk, hacks it, and prints out what looks like mumbo jumbo, but turns out to be the Stitchers program algorithm. This means that someone in the program gave it to the blogger (remember the person lurking around last week), and could also mean that someone from the program is responsible for his death. Perhaps that’s why Maggie told them the blogger’s brain couldn’t last long enough for a second stitch. Hmmm....
Kirsten sets out to discover who leaked the algorithm. She is able to clear Cameron, and Linus, and for some reason, takes Linus’ word for it that Camille was with him at the time. On a side note, this opens up the possibility for Kirsten and Cameron to date, because Cameron seems simultaneously taken aback and happy that Kirsten has no problem with the idea of co-workers dating.
As far as who is doing the leaking, Maggie is the only one left with enough clearance to access the full algorithm. So, off they go to the lab. As they are walking through the parking garage, Maggie drives up. She gets out saying she has something to tell them, and is shot in the arm before she can say anything else. Fortunately, she’s fine, but Kirsten takes off after the shooter, and Cameron takes off after her. He corrals her, and back in the lab, Maggie does not take well to being implicated in the leaking of the algorithm. She supplies an alibi, but only after she rambles on about how she spent two decades of her life investing in this program.
After hitting nothing but dead ends, Cameron asks Kirsten to remember all the things she saw in the stitch. As she is recalling people, objects, tattoos, Cameron says he knows who did it. He calls them all into the meeting room and shows them the recording of Marta’s incident. He has Linus zoom in on her wrist and Kirsten verifies that was the tattoo she saw on the wrist of someone handing the blogger an envelope. Camille lends credence to this supposition when she explains that the hospital informed her that Marta woke up and checked herself out of the hospital a week before.
So, I wonder if Marta was the person sneaking around last week, or if she is the one who just shot Maggie. After talking to Cameron about Marta, Kirsten finds out that Marta’s expertise was cryptology, leading her to review some strange texts she received. She also retrieved the mysterious copy of Catcher in the Rye. She is able to use the book to decipher the message: You are in danger. Trust no one.
Kirsten replies to the text asking if Marta can protect her. Marta says “yes.” The next scene shows Kirsten walking around China town and Marta coming to meet her. Marta tells her that she will be safe now, but I’m thinking what if Marta is the person to be afraid of. At any rate, Marta takes Kirsten back to Kirsten’s house where she turns the music up really loud and proceeds to look for bugs. Kirsten assures her no one is listening, and shows her a coded app on her phone that sweeps for radio frequency pulses. So, Marta insists on seeing her phone. When she sees it, she smiles and tells Kirsten she knew they were the same.
Marta tells Kirsten to pack, that she knows a place she can be safe. As Kirsten asks her who she’ll be safe from, she calls Cameron. He overhears her conversation with Marta while Marta confesses to leaking the algorithm and attempting to kill Maggie. Kirsten plays along while Camille and gang get hold of Fischer.
As Marta and Kirsten talk, Marta tells Kirsten that there’s more to the Stitchers program than meets the eye. She thinks it’s not really about solving murders. The stitching is just test runs for something bigger, but she doesn’t know what. This is an interesting plot twist considering she could be right. What if they really want to stitch into the minds of the living? A stitcher would make one hell of a secret agent.
Cameron shows up and Marta threatens to shoot him. She insists that she has to save Kirsten, that they are the only two people in the world who know....but she doesn’t say what it is that they know. She gets a call, but doesn’t say who it’s from. After she says “I understand,” she hangs up and tells Kirsten that she’ll be safe now. By this time the police have surrounded the house, and Marta walks out with the gun in her hand, but doesn’t make it very far.
Cameron decides they should stitch into Marta. Kirsten agrees that they need to know what she knew, to find out if she told anyone else about the Stitchers program. Maggie tells her they aren’t going to do that. Kirsten figures that Maggie is the one who called Marta and said something to her to make her walk out like that, and that she doesn’t want the stitch done because there’s something Marta knew that Maggie doesn’t want the rest of them to know.
Kirsten is right, but what she doesn’t know is that Maggie answers to a higher power within the program. It was the higher power that killed the blogger and had Maggie lie about it. He claimed he didn’t know who leaked the algorithm, but that he knew the guy had it. He had to be stopped from posting it, because they can’t let their technology fall into the wrong hands. Maggie wants to know what to tell Kirsten when she asks what the Stitchers program was really designed to do, and his reply is anything but the truth!
Finally, something to get hooked on; a mystery to solve. What is the Stitchers program really designed to do? Who knows? When will Kirsten figure it out? What will she do?
Top image courtesy of Roger Wong/INFphoto.com