“98 Seconds” is episode three of season one of Colony.
The episode opens cutting between a man pushing a shopping trolley of items to a building and a man speaking on a radio, welcoming his fellow colonists to Day 341 of the occupation. They are the same person. The man on the radio wants to talk about Tom, a man whose wife was killed in the Arrival and who now lives with his 12-year-old daughter, Fiona, in a house with four other families. Fiona was overheard at school blaming the aliens for her mother’s death and was expelled. Her friends were afraid to talk to her and finally Tom decided to take action. He loaded a truck filled with the tools of the occupation and another device. A bomb, which exploded in the gateway and destroyed a military convoy that was about to move into their block. Now, this seems to be referring to the events of “Pilot” – only it doesn’t sound quite like what actually happened. The man says that Tom was a genuine American hero, and asks what if he wasn’t one in a million but one of a million. The Redcaps are tracking in on the location of the signal. The man signs of, saying he is Geronimo, and is gone when the Redhats arrive. Will’s son, Bram, has been taping the broadcast, and puts it with a whole lot of other recordings.
Katie is heading somewhere with another woman, Rachel. Rachel tells her to relax and follow their lead. When they arrive at their destination, weapons are being handed out. There target is en route and they all mask up. A truck is driving towards them and a cyclist goes out in front and is hit. The truck stops and two Redcaps get out. The cyclist was a dummy, though, and they are taken prisoner. The Resistance calls in a hijack in progress, then some others want to help. Then two more Redcaps get out of the back of the truck and one of the Resistance, Justin, is hit. The Redcaps end up dead, Katie tries to help Justin but Broussard shoots him, then drones turn up after the Resistance has gone and kill everyone looting the truck. During this, Katie has been running two timers. The first was for the response time of the drones; they arrived after 98 seconds. The second was the response time for the humans, who took longer.
When Katie gets home, she is greeted by Grace’s new tutor but rushes to the bathroom and turns the shower, then starts scrubbing herself, for she has Justin’s blood on her. When will comes to see if she’s okay, she decides to get intimate – probably an aftereffect of what she saw. Afterwards, Will thinks that was a bit weird but Beau calls him with a situation.
Bram is at school and the teacher stars reading from the Transitional Authority Code of Conduct. After the lesson, Bram remains behind and gives the recording to the teacher. He asks about the launch the previous night; something seemed different. The teacher agrees, but says it is so far out of their comprehension. However, something is happening up in low Earth orbit. He saw something huge up there.
Beau’s situation was the truck, which was heading to the Green Zone. Will thinks a Resistance group held up the truck, then lost control of the situation and the public joined in. Beau asks if the cell took away their dead and Will thinks that’s a good question. He looks at the bodies and picks Justin out; he helped then was executed. He also lacks ID tags. Phyllis is also on the scene, and she agrees with Will that it was a Resistance cell, for a Geronimo head was found on the scene.
Will arrives at Justin’s home and Justin’s parents are being arrested. Inside, the house is being tossed. Will doesn’t think they needed to come in like stormtroopers. Jennifer McMahon is on the scene and she is looking for certain items. Then a cipher is found. She says they’ve found them before; they think it’s how the Resistance communicates. This means Will was right about Justin. His parents are carted off to the factory, so that others will think twice about getting involved and putting their families at risk. Broussard is also there.
Broussard tells Quayle that the occupation beat him to Justin’s parents’ place. Quayle wants to know how they got there so fast. The reply is that the occupation found people who know what they are doing. Quayle says that at least they got the intel they needed from the operation. He also wants Broussard to check with Katie to see if the occupation got anything that could lead back to them.
Neither Katie nor Will is that happy. For the same reason as it happens. Will explains about the operation that Justin was involved in, and that his house was searched and evidence was found linking Justin to the Resistance. Will isn’t happy about what he is having to do to get their son back.
Katie meets with Rachel again, who tells her that the dreams are bad too, but you get used to it. Broussard is also there and Katie isn’t happy with him. Broussard agrees the operation didn’t go well. But they will not let their people be taken and tortured. He hopes Katie would do the same for him in such a situation. He also wants to know what the occupation found.
Bram gets brought into something by his girlfriend, Pia. The new tutor, Lindsey seems a little odd. Will is bringing more professionalism to his job than the Resistance is happy about; he seems incapable of doing his job badly. At the end of the previous episode, “A Brave New World”, Will and Beau realised they had a leak. They don’t know it’s Katie. Will has the potential to become a major thorn in the side of the Resistance.